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INTRODUCTION 


EARLY   PROGRESS 


COTTON    MANUFACTURE 


UNITED    STATES 


••  How  strange  it  is  that  so  few  attempts  have  been  made  to  trace  the  rise  and 
progress  of  this  great  branch  of  industry,  the  Cotton  Manufacture ;  to  mark  the 
successive  steps  of  its  advancement,  the  solidity  of  the  foundations  on  which 
it  re-ts.  and  the  influence  which  it  has  already  had,  and  must  continue  to  have, 
on  the  number  and  condition  of  the  people."  —  McCclloch,  Edinburgh  Review. 


BOSTON: 
LITTLE,  BROWN  AND   COMPANY, 

1863. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1863,  by 

Little,  Brown  and  Company, 

in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


RIVERSIDE,    CAMBRIDGE! 
PRINTED     BY     II.     O.     HOUGHTON. 


PREFACE. 


The  Cotton  Manufacture  has  attained  such 
importance  in  the  United  States,  as  to  excite 
an  interest  as  to  its  early  history.  Many  cir- 
cumstances, apparently  of  little  consequence  at 
the  time,  depend  at  present  on  personal  rec- 
ollection, and  unless  placed  upon  record  now, 
^ill,  a  few  years  hence,  only  be  recognised  in 
the  uncertainty  of  tradition. 

I  rjropose  therefore  to  bring  together  such 
particulars  as  I  have  collected  from  time  to 
time  to  gratify  my  own  curiosity,  and  to  add 
such  as  can  still  be  obtained  from  any  reli- 
able authorities,  in  relation  to  the  introduc- 
tion and  progress  of  the  Cotton  Manufacture 
in  this  country ;  and  some  sketches  of  the 
state  of  the  business  in  other  countries,  par- 
ticularly in  Great  Britain,  at  the  time  when 
their  cotton  machinery  was  introduced  here. 

In  pursuing  my  inquiries,  besides  the  in- 
formation received  from  many  others,  I  have 


iv  PREFACE. 

to  acknowledge  my  particular  obligations  to 
Mr.  Zacliariali  Allen  of  Providence,  Mr.  Edward 
E.  Manton  of  the  Manufacturers'  Mutual  Insur- 
ance Company,  Boston,  and  to  Col.  Joshua 
Herrick,  who  at  the  age  of  about  eighty  years, 
is  still  actively  engaged  in  the  employment  of 
the  government,  and  able  to  communicate  per- 
sonally his  recollections  of  the  first  Cotton 
Factory  built  in  this  country,  at  Beverly, 
Massachusetts. 

It  has  been  very  difficult  to  obtain  such  in- 
formation as  I  wished  respecting  matters  0/ 
which  there  is  no  record,  and  in  which  no  one 
has  hitherto  felt  sufficient  interest  to  transmit, 
in  any  available  form,  the  facts  within  their 
knowledge  ;  so  that  the  following  pages  should 
only  be  considered  an  imperfect  attempt  to 
preserve  such  fragments  as  may  be  useful  to 
some  one,  who  may  in  future  be  able  to  treat 
the  subject  more  satisfactorily. 

SAMUEL  BATCHELDER. 

Cambridge,  October,  1863. 


COTTON   MANUFACTURE   IN  THE 
UNITED    STATES. 


"When  our  attention  is  called  to  the  history 
of  the  Cotton  Manufacture,  we  cannot  fail  to 
be  struck  with  the  change  that  has  taken 
place,  both  in  this  country  and  in  Europe, 
during  the  life  of  a  single  generation.  Nor 
is  this  change  confined  to  those  actually  em- 
ployed in  the  business,  but  extends  to  the 
habits,  occupation,  and  condition  of  a  great 
proportion  of  the  population. 

It  was  only  by  reason  of  a  fortunate  con- 
currence of  several  improvements  in  labor- 
saving  machinery  that  such  an  extension  of 
the  cultivation  and  manufacture  of  cotton 
was    rendered  possible. 

Without  the  application  of  rollers  to  the 
drawing  of  the  thread,  and  the  consequent 
use  of  w^ater-power  in  spinning,  the  whole 
population  of  Great  Britain,  exclusive  of 
those  employed  hi  agriculture,  would  not  be 
able    to    produce    the    quantity   of  yarn   now 


2  ADVANTAGE   OF   MACHINERY. 

spun  in  that  country ;  and  without  the  ap- 
plication of  .steam-power,  all  the  waterfalls  in 
the  island  would  be  insufficient  to  drive  the 
machinery. 

Without  the  invention  of  Whitney's  cot- 
ton-gin it  would  have  been  impossible  for 
this  country  to  have  supplied  the  raw  ma- 
terial for  the  increasing  wants  of  the  manu- 
facturer ;  —  and  when  by  these  means  the 
production  of  cotton  yarn  had  exceeded  the 
ability  of  the  hand-loom  weaver,  to  convert 
it  into  cloth,  the  invention  of  the  power-loom 
not  only  supplied  the  deficiency,  but  gave  a 
new  impulse  to  all  the  preliminary  branches 
of  the  manufacture. 

It  is  thus  that  mutual  wants  concur  to 
stimulate  improvements ;  and  the  introduction 
of  cotton  machinery — which  in  England  was 
opposed  by  mobs  and  violence  on  account  of 
an  apprehension  that  laborers  would  be  thrown 
out  of  employment,  and  in  this  country  was 
regarded  with  little  favor,  from  the  fear  that 
the  female  part  of  the  population,  by  the 
disuse  of  the  distaff,  should  become  idle  — 
lias  resulted  in  the  profitable  employment  of 
a  much  larger  number  than  could  have  been 
supported  by  the  business  in  the  former  la- 
borious process,  without  the  aid  of  machinery, 
and,  besides,  has   reduced  the    cost   of  cotton 


HAND-WEAVING.  3 

clothing  to  a  degree  which  adds  much  to  the 
comfort  and  probably  also  to  the  average 
duration  of  human  life. 

In  speaking  of  the  cotton  manufacture,  I 
wish  to  be  understood  as  indicating  such 
operations  as  are  carried  on  by  the  use  of 
machinery  driven  by  water  or  steam  power, 
or  by  other  means  than  the  direct  application 
of  human  labor.  The  introduction  of  such 
machinery  marks  a  great  era  in  the  world's 
history,  not  simply  in  relation  to  those  directly 
employed  in  the  business,  but  also  by  the 
market  afforded,  and  the  encouragement  given 
for  raising  such  quantities  of  the  raw  material 
as  the  whole  population  of  the  world  would 
scarcely  be  able  to  spin  and  weave,  by  the 
use  of  the  single  spindle  and  the  hand-shuttle. 

Until  about  forty  years  previous  to  the 
commencement  of  our  Revolutionary  War,  all 
the  fabrics  made  of  cotton  were  woven  on 
the  common  loom,  in  which  the  shuttle  was 
thrown  through  the  web  with  one  hand,  and 
caught  with  the  other,  and  this  operation 
repeated  for  every  thread  of  the  woof.  The 
yarn  was  spun  upon  a  wheel  with  a  single 
spindle,  and  the  cotton  was  prepared  for  spin- 
ning by  the  laborious  operation  of  carding 
with  a  pair  of  hand-cards. 

Stock  cards  were  substituted  for  hand  cards 


4  SPINNING  JENNY. 

at  a  date  which  cannot  be  well  ascertained, 
and  in  1748,  August  30th,  a  patent  was 
granted  to  Lewis  Paul,  in  which  he  describes 
the  use  of  a  card  cylinder  operating  upon 
cards  placed  beneath.  Further  improvements 
in  carding  were  said  to  have  been  made  by 
Lees  and  Hargraves,  but  there  is  no  record 
of  any  patent  to  either. 

About  this  time  many  attempts  were  made 
to  apply  machinery  to  the  spinning  of  cotton. 
Among  the  first  which  went  into  operation 
with  any  success  was  the  Spinning  Jenny, 
which  was  little  else  than  uniting  a  number 
of  spindles  in  the  same  machine,  but  oper- 
ating by  extending  and  twisting  the  thread 
in  the  same  manner  as  on  the  one-thread 
wheel  by  hand. 

During  the  period  from  1768  to  1775, 
Arkwright  obtained  his  patents  for  spinning 
by  means  of  rollers,  and  for  machinery  for 
the  carding  and  preparation  of  the  cotton  in 
a  manner  adapted  to  that  mode  of  spinning. 
These  were  the  great  points  in  the  establish- 
ment of  manufacturing  by  machinery.  The 
other  branches  of  the  business  had  in  the 
mean  time  become  so  far  perfected,  that,  in 
1774,  an  Act  of  Parliament  was  passed  to 
prevent  the  exportation  of  cotton  machinery, 
with    the    intention    of    confining    those    im- 


CONSUMPTION    OF   COTTON.  5 

provements  to  Great  Britain,  and  thus  securing 
a  monopoly  of  this  branch  of  manufacturing. 

During  our  Revolutionary  War,  Arkwright 
was  improving  and  extending  the  manufacture 
of  cotton.  His  patents  were  contested,  and 
sometimes  his  machinery  was  broken  by  mobs; 
and  in  1781,  by  a  failure  in  one  of  his  suits 
in  the  Court  of  King's  Bench,  the  use  of  his 
machinery  became  public,  and  his  patents  were 
finally  declared  void  in  1785. 

In  1782  Watt  took  his  patent  for  the  steam- 
engine  ;  and  in  1785  cylinder  printing  was 
invented  by  Bell.  So  that  the  close  of  our 
Revolutionary  War  found  England  in  possession 
of  all  the  elements  of  her  great  manufactur- 
ing prosperity,  and  prepared  to  extend  the 
business  as  fast  as  a  supply  of  raw  material 
could  be  furnished. 

At  this  time,  1784,  the  quantity  of  cotton 
used  in  England  annually  was  supposed  to 
be  only  about  11,000,000  pounds* 

In  the  correspondence  of  the  Earl  of  Chat- 
ham, Vol.  II.  p.  420,  it  is  stated  in  a  note 
that,  "in  1766,  cotton,  as  an  article  of  com- 
merce, was  scarcely  known  in  Great  Britain. 
The    entire    value    of    cotton   goods   manulac- 

*  In  The  Cotton  Trade  of  Great  Britain,  by  Mann,  pp.  93,  94, 
the  quantity  of  cotton  consumed  in  1781  is  stated  at  5,101,990 
pounds,  and  in  1859  at  976,600,000  pounds. 


(3  CALICO. 

tured  at  the  accession  of  George  the  Third 
being  estimated  to  amount  to  only  £200.000 
sterling  a  year;  and  in  1782  the  whole  prod- 
uce of  the  cotton  manufacture  did  not  ex- 
ceed £2,000,000."  In  1859  the  exports  alone 
were  above  £48,000,000. 

Pepys,  in  his  Diary,  under  date  of  Feb- 
27,  1664,  says:  "Sir  Martin  Noel  told  us, 
the  dispute  between  him,  as  farmer  of  the 
additional  duty,  and  the  East  India  Company, 
whether  calico  be  linen  or  no,  which  he  says 
it  is,  having  been  ever  returned  so.  They 
say  it  is  made  of  cotton  wool  and  grows  upon 
trees." 

The  printed  calicoes  made  in  Great  Britain 
before  the  time  of  Arkwright's  inventions  were 
always  made  with  linen  warp,  the  cotton 
spun  by  hand  not  being  strong  enough  for 
that  purpose. 

When  by  means  of  Arkwright's  machinery 
cotton  yarn  was  made  suitable  for  warps,  the 
prejudice  against  new  inventions  was  such 
that  the  manufacturers  could  not  be  pre- 
vailed upon  to  weave  it  into  calicoes.  Mr. 
Strutt  was  at  length  successful  in  weaving  a 
considerable  quantity,  when  it  was  discovered 
that  they  were  subject  to  double  the  duty 
of  those  manufactured  with  linen  warp,  and, 
when  printed,  were  prohibited.    He  had  there- 


WHITNEY'S   COTTON    GIN.  7 

fore  to  petition  Parliament  for  relief,  which 
was  obtained,  after  much  opposition  from  the 
Lancashire  manufacturers. 

About  this  time,  1781,  the  English  began 
to  import  some  cotton  from  Brazil,  and  ten 
years  later  from  the  United  States;  but  the 
quantity  proved  altogether  inadequate  to  sup- 
ply the  demands  of  the  increasing  manufac- 
tures of  England,  on  account  of  the  difficulty 
of  separating  the  cotton  from  the  seed,  either 
by  the  hand  or  any  machinery  then  in  use, 
particularly  of  the  kind  which  was  best 
adapted  to  cultivation  in  our  soil  and  cli- 
mate. At  this  time,  1793,  the  invention  of 
the  saw-gin  by  Eli  Whitney  removed  the  dif" 
cultv. 

Thus  step  by  step,  in  Great  Britain  and 
this  country,  within  little  more  than  half  a 
century,  improvements  have  been  made  in 
the  manufacture  and  production  of  cotton, 
which  have  given  it  great  importance  in 
finance  and  political  economy,  and  no  small 
influence  in  international  affairs. 

The  attention  of  Hamilton  was  drawn  at  a 
very  early  period  to  the  importance  of  the 
cultivation  and  manufacture  of  cotton.  The 
following  extracts  are  from  two  pamphlets 
published  by  him  in  1774  and  1775,  in  vin- 
dication of  the  measures  of  Congress. 


8  OPINIONS   OF   HAMILTON. 

"With  respect  to  cotton,  you  do  not  pre- 
tend to  deny  that  a  sufficient  quantit}^  may 
be  produced.  Several  of  the  Southern  col- 
onies are  so  favorable  to  it  that,  with  due 
cultivation,  in  a  couple  of  years  they  would 
afford  enough  to  clothe  the  whole  continent. 
As  to  the  expense  of  bringing  it  by  land, 
the  best  way  will  be  to  manufacture  it  where 
it  grows,  and  afterwards  transport  it  to  the 
other  colonies.  Upon  this  plan  I  apprehend 
the  expense  would  not  be  greater  than  to 
build  and  equip  large  ships  to  import  the 
manufactures  of  Great  Britain  from  thence. 
If  we  were  to  turn  our  attention  from  ex- 
ternal to  internal  commerce,  we  would  give 
greater  facility  and  more  lasting  prosperity 
to    our    country  than    she    can    possibly   have 

otherwise If  by  the  necessity  of  the 

thing  manufactures  should  once  be  established 
and  take  root  among  us,  they  will  pave  the 
way  still  more  to  the  future  grandeur  and 
glory  of  America."  Life  of  Hamilton,  by  his 
son,  Vol.  I.  pp.  29-35. 

The  foregoing  extracts  show  a  remarkable 
anticipation  and  foreshadowing  of  coming 
events  in  regard  both  to  the  cultivation  and 
manufacture  of  cotton,  at  a  time  when  there 
was  little  promise  or  anticipation  of  either, 
and  indicate  a  wonderful  maturity  of  judg- 
ment in  a  youth  of  eighteen. 


KAY'S  FLY-SHUTTLE.  9 

The  first  attempt  at  manufacturing  cotton 
by  machinery  in  England,  of  which  we  have 
any  account,  was  the  invention,  by  John 
Wyatt,  of  Litchfield,  of  machinery  for  spin- 
ning, for  which  a  patent  was  taken  in  1738 
in  the  name  of  Lewis  Paul.* 

A  mill  was  built  at  Birmingham  in  1741 
or  1742,  which  was  turned  by  two  asses 
walking  round  an  axis;  and  ten  girls  were 
employed  in  attending  the  work.  This  estab- 
lishment was  unsuccessful,  and  the  machinery 
was  sold  in  1743. 

A  work  upon  a  larger  scale  upon  a  stream 
of  water  was  established  at  Northampton,  with 
250  spindles,  and  employed  fifty  hands ;  but 
the  work  did  not  prosper,  and  in  1764  passed 
into  other  hands,  as  appears  from  the  letter 
of  Charles  Wyatt,  the  son  of  the  inventor, 
published  in  Baines's  History  of  the  Cotton 
Manufacture,  p.  135. 

In  1733,  John  Kay  of  Colchester  invented 
the  fly-shuttle,  which  was  used  by  the  woollen 
weavers,  whose  cloth  was  usually  so  wide  as 
to  require  one  person  on  each  side  of  the 
loom  to  '  throw  the  shuttle ;  but  it  was  used 
very  little  by  weavers  of  cotton  until  1760, 
when  his  son,  Robert  Kay,  invented  the  drop- 
box,  by  means  of  which  the  weaver  can  use 

*  See  note  A.  at  end  of  volume. 


10  SPINNING-JENNY. 

any  one  of  three  shuttles,  with  weft  of  differ- 
ent colors,  at  pleasure.* 

About  1740,  manufacturing  was  commenced 
at  Manchester.  The  merchants  supplied  the 
weavers  with  warps,  which  were  of  linen  yarn 
imported  from  Germany,  and  with  raw  cotton 
for  the  weft,  which  the  weavers  employed 
their  own  families,  or  other  parties,  to  card 
and  spin. 

At  this  time  the  carding  was  done  by  hand- 
cards, —  the  spinning  on  the  common  one- 
thread  wheel,  and  the  weaving  on  the  hand- 
loom. 

To  facilitate  the  supply  of  weft  for  the 
weavers,  which  it  was  difficult  to  procure  in 
sufficient  quantity,  the  spinning-jenny  was 
invented  by  Thomas  Highs,  about  1764.  He 
also  claims  the  invention  of  spinning  by 
rollers,  having  made  some  experiments  with 
rollers    before    they  were  used  by  Arkwright. 

About  this  time  various  improvements  were 
made  in  the  carding  machinery  to  supersede 
the  hand-cards  then  in  use,  which  resulted  in 
the  introduction  of  a  cylinder  card,  from  which 
the  cotton  was  taken  by  hand. 

*  In  the  patent  of  John  Kay,  May  26,  1833,  the  specification 
in    describing     the    operation    of    the    fly-shuttle    says :    "  The 

weaver  sits  in  the  middle  of  the  loom  and  pulls  a  small  cord, 
which  easts  the  shuttle  from  side  to  side  at  pleasure.  The  cloth 
is  more  even  than  it  is  where  the  layer  (lay)  is  pulled  by  two 
men,  one  at  each  end  of  the  loom." 


ARK  WRIGHT'S  MACHINERY.  H 

In  1772,  John  Lees  invented  the  feeder,  and 
James  Hargreaves,  who  had  made  important 
improvements  in  the  spinning-jenny,  was 
said  to  have  invented  the  crank  and  comb 
for  taking  the  cotton  from  the  card ;  and 
Thomas  Wood,  in  1774,  obtained  what  was 
called  a  perpetual  or  endless  carding,  by  nail- 
ing the  cards  on  the  cylinder  spirally  instead 
of  longitudinally, —  for  which  he  obtained  a 
patent  in  1776.  All  of  these  improvements 
were  combined  in  Arkwright's  machinery ;  for 
which  he  took  his  second  patent  in  1775 ;  and 
the  parties  above  named  claimed  one  or 
another  of  these  inventions ;  and  Guest,  in  his 
u  History  of  the  Cotton  Manufacture,"  seems 
to  admit  all  these  claims  in  his  anxiety  to 
limit  the  merit  of  Arkwright,  and  says  he 
used  a  revolving  can  for  twisting  the  rovings, 
or  perpetual  carding,  which  had  been  used 
for  that  purpose  by  Butler  as  early  as  1759, 
which  was  before  any  machinery  for  produc- 
ing such  roving  or  perpetual  carding  was 
invented. 

It  is  not  always  easy  to  decide  to  whom 
we  ought  to  award  the  merit  of  many  inven- 
tions, which  may  have  been  the  study  of 
various  ingenious  mechanics  for  years  with- 
out success ;  and  it  happens  in  relation  to 
cotton    machinery,  as  in  other  mechanical  in- 


12  ARKWRIGHT'S   MACHINERY. 

ventions,  that  there  are  conflicting  claims  to 
all  the  most  important  improvements,  after 
they  are  put  in  operation.  Many  may  have 
been  engaged  for  a  long  time  in  unsuccessful 
attempts  to  accomplish  the  object,  and  among 
them  some  who  have  been  partially  success- 
ful, but  not  so  far  as  to  make  their  schemes 
of  any  practical  utility.  At  length  some  one 
with  better  advantages,  or  better  workman- 
ship, or  by  the  application  of  the  same  prin- 
ciples with  more  skill  and  better  judgment, 
builds  a  machine  which  goes  into  success- 
ful operation.  In  such  a  case  all  the  un- 
successful schemers  rise  up  and  say,  "  I  tried 
that  principle,"  or  "I  put  that  wheel  in  oper- 
ation years  ago " ;  and  thus  all  those,  who 
condemn  themselves  by  having  made  the  at- 
tempt without  success,  come  before  the  pub- 
lic and  contend  for  the  merit  of  the  more 
fortunate  or  more  skilful  mechanic  who  has 
brought  the  plan  to  perfection. 

Something  of  this  kind  probably  occurred 
in  relation  to  the  invention  of  Ark w right's 
spinning  machinery.  According  to  the  evi- 
dence on  the  trial  in  relation  to  his  patent 
in  1785,  it  would  appear  that  Highs,  who 
invented  the  spinning-jenny  in  1763  or  1764, 
afterward  made  some  experiments  or  at- 
tempts  at   spinning  with   rollers,  but  without 


SPINNING  MACHINERY.  13 

succeeding  so  far  as  to  make  it  of  any  prac- 
tical use.  It  seems  probable  that  Arkwright 
became  acquainted  with  the  experiments  of 
Highs,  and  was  able,  by  combination  with  his 
own  plans,  to  mature  the  invention,  and  put 
it  in  successful  operation.  This,  as  well  as 
most  other  important  improvements,  is  the 
result  of  successive  experiments  and  failures, 
—  until  some  one  who  becomes  acquainted 
with  the  unsuccessful  schemes,  and  has  the 
skill  and  good  judgment  to  remedy  the  de- 
fects, succeeds  in  perfecting  the  invention. 

In  1780  there  were  twenty  water-frame 
factories,  the  property  of  Mr.  Arkwright,  or 
of  parties  who  had  paid  him  for  permission 
to  use  his  machinery;  and  after  his  patent 
was  made  public  in  1785,  the  number  in- 
creased so  rapidly  that  in  1790  there  were 
one  hundred  and  fifty  cotton  factories  in  Eng- 
land and  Wales. 

Soon  after  the  renewal  of  intercourse,  which 
took  place  between  this  country  and  Great 
Britain  in  consequence  of  the  peace  of  1783, 
we  obtained  some  knowledge  that  during  the 
war  and  the  contest  with  us  for  the  few 
years  preceding,  she  had  commenced  a  new 
branch  of  business,  which  she  was  pursuing 
and  extending  with  wonderful  success;  but 
in  consequence  of  their  laws,  passed  in  1774, 


14        REPORT  OF  TENCH  COXE. 

against  the  exportation  of  machinery  and  the 
emigration  of  mechanics  and  manufacturers, 
our  information  on  the  subject  was  for  a 
long  time  confined  to  vague  and  uncertain 
rumor. 

Tench  Coxe  says,  in  his  Report  in  1810: 
"In  1786  I  became  acquainted  with  the  fact 
that  labor-saving  spinning  machinery  was  con- 
siderable in  Great  Britain.  It  was  understood 
that  it  was  applicable  at  that  time  only  to 
the  carding  and  spinning  of  cotton,  which  we 
then  constantly  imported  from  foreign  coun- 
tries, apparently  to  the  amount  of  our  whole 
consumption.  In  the  course  of  the  following 
autumn  and  winter,  repeated  examinations 
and  considerations  of  the  subject  occasioned 
very  high  expectations  from  a  few  well  au- 
thenticated facts  in  relation  to  the  production 
of  the  cotton  raw  material  in  gardens  and 
other  small  pieces  of  land  as  far  north  as 
38°  45',—  the  County  of  Talbot,  Maryland, 
and  in  some  other  places  on  the  rivers  of 
the  Chesapeake  Bay.  It  was  inferred,  that,  as 
the  shrub  or  the  tree  grew  in  that  central 
degree  of  our  country,  all  the  extensive  re- 
gion south  of  39°  was  capable  of  producing 
cotton,  which  is  found  in  climates  not  only 
hotter  than  those  of  North  America,  but  in 
the  torrid  zone.     It  was  therefore  confidently 


COTTON   IN   THE  MIDDLE   STATES.  15 

presumed  that  the  cotton-spinning  mill  might 
be  brought  into  very  beneficial  use  in  the 
United  States.  The  production  of  cotton  in 
the  old  settlements  of  Virginia  was  carefully 
examined  as  a  test  of  this  opinion,  and  op- 
portunities offered  to  make  it  in  a  manner 
commanding  entire  confidence. 

"  After  the  more  exact  information  of  the 
existence  and  operation  of  the  labor-saving 
machinery  in  Europe  had  led  to  due  reflection 
on  the  incalculable  importance  of  the  vast 
capacity  of  this  country  to  produce  the  proper 
raw  material,  the  effectual  measures  were 
actively  pursued  to  excite  the  attention  of 
the  whole  community,  and  particularly  of  the 
planters  of  the  five  original  Southern  States. 
But,  though  our  capacity  to  produce  the  cotton 
was  so  great,  as  at  this  time  we  know  it  to 
have  always  been,  —  though  labor-saving  ma- 
chinery was  effecting  a  gainful  revolution  in 
manufactures  in  Great  Britain, — though  cotton 
was  then  worth  in  the  United  States  forty- 
four  cents  per  pound,  owing  to  foreign  trade- 
laws, —  and  though  it  was  at  high  prices  in 
many  parts  of  Europe,  —  several  years  had 
elapsed  before  sufficient  attention  to  the  cul- 
ture could  be  excited,  even  by  the  numerous 
publications  which  were  incessantly  made." 
In    addition    to   the    foregoing    from   Tench 


16  COTTON   IN  THE   MIDDLE   STATES. 

Coxe,  I  make  the  following  extract  from  a 
pamphlet  by  Dr.  G.  Emerson  of  Philadelphia, 
entitled  "  Cotton  in  the  Middle  States,"  pub- 
lished last  year  (1862):  — 

"  Long  before  the  Southern  States  took  up 
its  regular  culture,  cotton  was  raised  on  the 
eastern  shore  of  Maryland,  lower  counties  of 
Delaware,  and  other  places  in  the  Middle 
States.  As  early  as  1736,  and  for  some  time 
after,  it  was  chiefly  regarded  as  an  ornamental 
plant,  and  confined  to  gardens ;  but  it  soon 
became  appreciated  for  its  useful  qualities, 
and  was  brought  under  rermlar  cultivation. 
This  culture,  though  comparatively  limited  in 
those  places,  has  never  been  entirely  aban- 
doned up  to  the  present  day.  I  have  myself 
seen  many  families  who  came  from  Sussex 
County,  Delaware,  to  reside  in  the  adjoining 
County  of  Kent,  wearing  clothes  made  of 
cotton  of  their  own  raising,  spinning,  and 
weaving. 

"The  culture  of  cotton  in  this  section  of 
our  country  gradually  diminished  in  conse- 
quence of  the  vast  area  over  which  the  plant 
was  extended  in  more  southern  States.  In 
competition  with  these,  our  more  northern 
farmers  found  they  possessed  superior  advan- 
tages for  raising  other  field-crops,  from  which 
they  derived  greater  profits. 


OPINION    OF   MADISON.  17 

c:  Limited  as  has  been  the  culture  of  cotton 
on  the  peninsula  between  the  Delaware  and 
Chesapeake  Bays,  it  has  furnished  a  demon- 
stration of  the  highest  importance  to  our 
country.  In  proof  of  this  it  may  be  stated, 
that,  at  the  close  of  the  Revolution,  a  conven- 
tion was  held  at  Annapolis,  in  1786,  to  con- 
sider what  means  could  be  best  resorted  to 
for  the  purpose  of  remedying  the  embarrass- 
ment of  the  country,  then  so  much  exhausted 
in  its  finances.  The  late  President  Madison, 
a  member  of  this  convention,  from  Virginia, 
there  expressed  it  as  his  opinion,  that,  from  the 
resuUs  of  cotton  raising  in  Talbot  County,  Maryland, 
and  numerous  other  proofs  furnished  in  Virginia, 
there  was  no  reason  to  doubt  l  that  the  United  States 
would  one  day  become  a  great  cotton-producing 
country ! ' 

"It  would  hence  appear  that  the  first  cul- 
ture of  cotton  in  the  United  States,  worthy 
of  notice,  was  made  on  the  peninsula  between 
the  Delaware  and  Chesapeake  Bays,  from 
whence  it  crossed  into  Western  Maryland  and 
Virginia,  and  so  went  southwards." 

Dr.  Emerson  further  reports  that  cotton  has 
heretofore  been  raised  in  the  lower  portion 
of  the  peninsula  between  the  Delaware  and 
Chesapeake  Bays,  so  as  to  form  an  important 
item    in    home    industry.      A    colored    family 


18  CULTIVATION   OF   COTTON. 

Game  last  year  from  Sussex  County  to  live  in 
Camden,  Delaware,  bringing  with  them  the 
seed  of  cotton,  which  they  had  continued  to 
cultivate,  and  spin  and  weave  for  clothing. 
The  cotton  in  this  new  situation  perfected 
itself  well,  as  appears  from  a  boll  in  my  pos- 
session ;  and  Dr.  Emerson  proposes  to  plant 
several  acres  with  this  seed,  which  had  be- 
come acclimated,  so  that,  according  to  the 
experience  of  the  last  season,  the  cotton 
matured  much  more  perfectly  in  that  location 
from  seed  that  had  been  raised  there  than 
from  seed  procured  at  distant  places. 

In  relation  to  the  first  cultivation  of  cotton 
in  Carolina  and  Georgia,  the  following  are 
extracts  from  a  letter  given  by  Tench  Coxe 
from  Richard  Teake,  dated  Savannah,  Dec.  11, 
1788:  "I  have  been  this  year  an  adventurer, 
and  the  first  that  has  attempted  on  a  large 
scale  in  the  article  of  cotton.  Several  here, 
as  well  as  in  Carolina,  have  followed  me,  and 

tried  the  experiment I  shall  raise  about 

five  thousand  pounds  in  the  seed  from  about 
eight  acres  of  land,  and  next  year  I  expect 
to    plant    from    fifty    to    one    hundred    acres. 

....  The  lands  in  the  southern  part  of 
this  State  are  admirably  adapted  to  the  rais- 
ing of  this  commodity.  The  climate  is  so 
mild  so  far  to  the    South,  scarce   any    winter 


SEA   ISLAND    COTTON.  J 9 

is  felt,  and  —  another  grand  advantage  —  ivhiles 
can  be  employed.  The  labor  is  not  severe 
attending  it,  not  more  than  raising  Indian 
corn." 

In  relation  to  the  origin  of  Sea  Island  cot- 
ton, he  gives,  as  communicated  by  Dr.  Mease, 
a  letter  from  Patrick  Walsh,  from  which  the 
following  is  extracted :  "  It  is  pleasing  to 
view  the  rising  prosperity  of  the  land  you 
live  in,  and  particularly  so,  too,  when  I  re- 
flect that  one  of  the  present  sources  of  her 
riches  was,  in  a  very  great  measure,  derived 
from  myself.  In  the  year  1785  I  settled  in 
Kingston,  Jamaica,  where,  finding  my  friend 
Frank  Leavet,  with  his  family  and  all  his 
negroes,  in  a  distressed  situation,  he  applied 
to  me  for  advice  as  to  what  steps  he  should 
take,  having  no  employment  for  his  slaves. 
I  advised  him  to  go  to  Georgia  and  settle 
on  some   of  the   islands,  and   plant  provisions 

until   something  better  turned   up At 

length  he  resolved  to  go  to  the  place  I  rec- 
ommended. Early  in  the  year  1786  I  sent 
him  a  large  quantity  of  various  seeds  of 
Jamaica;  and  Mr.  Moss  and  Colonel  Brown 
requested  me  to  get  some  of  the  Pernam- 
buco  cotton  seed,  of  which  I  sent  him  three 
large  sacks,  of  wdiich  he  made  no  use  but 
by  accident.     In  a  letter  to  me   in    1789   he 


20  CULTIVATION   OF   COTTON. 

said  :  '  Being  in  want  of  the  sacks  for  gather- 
ing in  my  provisions,  I  shook  their  contents 
on  the  dung-hill,  and  it  happening  to  be  a 
very  wet  season,  in  the  spring  multitudes  of 
plants  covered  the  place.  These  I  drew  out 
and  transplanted  them  into  two  acres  of 
ground,  and  was  highly  gratified  to  find  an 
abundant  crop.  This  encouraged  me  to  plant 
more.  I  used  all  my  strength  in  cleaning 
and  planting,  and  have  succeeded  beyond  my 
most  sanguine  expectations.' " 

In  1789,  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  were 
at  a  very  low  ebb.  Their  great  staples,  nee 
and  indigo,  had  declined  in  price,  and  they 
had  not  as  yet  entered  on  the  cultivation  of 
cotton.  ^Eclanus  Burke,  in  a  debate  on  the 
tariff,  on  the  16th  of  April,  1789,  to  induce 
the  House  to  lay  a  considerable  duty  on 
hemp  and  cotton,  gave  a  melancholy  picture 
of  the  situation  of  those  States.  "  The  sta- 
ple products  of  South  Carolina  and  Georgia," 
he  observed,  "were  hardly  worth  cultivation 
on  account  of  their  fall  in  price.  The  lands 
were  certainly  well  adapted  to  the  growth 
of  hemp,  and  he  had  no  doubt  but  its  cul- 
ture would  be  practised  with  attention.  Cot- 
ton was  likewise  in  contemplation  among 
them,  and  if  good  seed  could  be  procured, 
he  hoped  might  succeed." 


ENCOURAGEMENT   OF   MANUFACTURES.      21 

Considering  that  among  the  complaints 
against  Great  Britain  before  the  Revolution 
some  of  the  principal  were  the  restrictions 
upon  trade  and  intercourse  between  the  col- 
onies, and  the  discouragement,  and  prohibi- 
tion in  many  cases,  of  manufacturing  for 
themselves,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that, 
at  the  close  of  the  war,  we  very  soon  turned 
our  attention  to  the  introduction  of  such 
branches  of  manufacture  as  promised  any  ad- 
vantage ;  and  the  recent  improvements  that 
had  been  made  in  the  application  of  machin- 
ery to  the  manufacture  of  cotton  in  Great 
Britain  could  not  fail  to  make  this  a  prom- 
inent object.  Accordingly  we  find,  that,  as 
early  as  1786,  before  the  adoption  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  the  Legis- 
lature of  Massachusetts  was  offering  an  en- 
couragement for  the  introduction  of  machin- 
ery for  carding  and  spinning  cotton. 

On  the  25th  of  October,  1786,  Richard 
Cranch  of  the  Senate,  and  Mr.  Clarke  and 
Mr.  Bowdoin  of  the  House,  were  appointed  — 
"  to  view  an}'  new  invented  machines  that 
are  making  within  this  Commonwealth  for 
the  purpose  of  manufacturing  sheep's  and 
cotton  wool,  and  report  what  measures  are 
proper  for  the  Legislature  to  take  to  encour- 
age the  same."    This  committee  reported  that 


22  AID    FROM   LEGISLATURE. 

u  they  had  examined  those  very  curious  and 
useful  machines  made  by  Robert  and  Alex- 
ander Barr  for  the  purpose  of  carding  and 
spinning  cotton."  And,  in  accordance  with 
the  further  report  of  the  committee,  a  re- 
solve was  passed  on  the  16th  of  November, 
1786,  granting  the  sum  of  £200,  "to  enable 
them  to  complete  the  said  three  machines, 
and  also  a  roping  machine,  and  to  construct 
such  other  machines  as  are  necessary  for  the 
purpose  of  carding,  roping,  and  spinning  of 
sheep's  wool,  as  well  as  of  cotton  wool." 

On  the  8th  of  March,  1787,  "Richard 
Cranch  was  appointed  by  the  Senate,  with 
such  as  the  House  should  join,  to  examine 
the  machines,  which  are  now  nearly  com- 
pleted,"—  and  to  examine  and  allow  the  ac- 
count of  Robert  and  Alexander  Barr;  "and 
also  to  report  to  the  next  General  Court 
what  gratuity  in  their  opinion  the  said  Robert 
and  Alexander  justly  deserve,  as  a  reward  for 
their  ingenuity  in  forming  those  machines,  and 
as  an  encouragement  for  their  public  spirit  in 
making  them  known  to  this  Commonwealth." 

The  committee  allow  their  account  to  the 
amount  of  £189  12.5.,  in  which  is  contained  an 
item  for  "expense  in  transporting  the  ma- 
chines to  and  from  Boston,"  —  from  which  we 
may  infer  that  they  were  exhibited  to  the 
Legislature. 


HUGH   ORR.  23 

On  May  2,  1787,  a  resolve  was  passed  dis- 
charging them  from  the  £200,  and  granting 
them  six  tickets  in  the  land  lottery ;  —  and  pro- 
viding: further,  that  said  machines  should  be 
left  under  the  care  of  Hugh  Or,  Esq.,  who  is 
"requested  to  explain  to  such  citizens  as  may 
apply  for  the  same  the  principles  on  which 
said  machines  are  constructed  and  the  advan- 
tages arising  from  their  use,  both  by  verbal 
explanations,  and  by  letting  them  see  the  ma- 
chinery at  work." 

According  to  Judge  Mitchell's  "  History  of 
Bridgewater,"  Colonel  Hugh  Orr  of  that  place 
was  instrumental  in  the  first  introduction  of 
cotton  machinery  into  this  country.  Hugh 
Orr  was  born  at  Lochwinnock  in  Scotland,  Jan- 
uary 2,  1715,  and  came  to  America  June  17, 
1740,  and  settled  at  Bridgewater,  where  he 
died  December  6,  1798.  He  was  engaged 
there  before  the  Revolution  in  the  manufacture 
of  fire-arms,  and  at  the  commencement  of  that 
war  made  the  first  cannon  that  were  made  in 
this  country  by  boring  from  the  solid  casting. 
He  is  said  to  have  invited  Robert  and  Alex- 
ander Barr,  brothers,  from  Scotland,  in  order 
to  construct  at  his  works  in  East  Bridgewater 
machinery  for  carding,  roving,  and  spinning 
cotton. 

Thomas  Somers,  another  Scotchman,  under 


24  THOMAS    SOMERS. 

the  direction  of  Mr.  Orr.  constructed  other 
machinery  for  the  same  purpose ;  and  on  the 
eighth  of  March,  1787,  the  General  Court  placed 
in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Orr  twenty  pounds  for  the 
encouragement  of  the  artist.  Mr.  Orr  also, 
about  the  same  time,  employed  another  for- 
eigner, by  the  name  of  McClure,  to  weave  jeans 
and  corduroys  by  hand  with  the  fly-shuttle. 

In  March,  1787,  a  petition  was  before  the 
Legislature  of  Massachusetts,  from  Thomas 
Somers,  said 'to  have  been  a  midshipman  in 
the  English  nav}-,  representing,  "that,  in  the 
fall  of  the  year  1785,  the  tradesmen  and  man- 
ufacturers of  Baltimore,  having  formed  them- 
selves into  an  association  in  order  to  apply  to 
the  Legislature  in  behalf  of  American  manu- 
factures, being  stimulated  thereto  by  a  circular 
letter  received  from  a  committee  of  the  trades- 
men and  manufacturers  of  the  town  of  Boston. 
Your  petitioner,  then  residing  in  Baltimore 
(having  been  formerly  brought  up  to  the  cot- 
ton manufactory,  and  willing  to  contribute 
what  lay  in  his  power  to  introduce  said  man- 
ufacture in  America),  did,  at  his  own  risk  and 
expense,  go  to  England  in  order  to  prepare 
the  machines  for  carding  and  spinning  cotton. 
That,  after  much  difficulty,  your  petitioner 
found  that  he  could  only  take  descriptions  and 
models  of  said  engines ;  with  which  he  returned 


MODELS    OF   MACHINES.  25 

to  Baltimore  last  summer.  Soon  after  his  ar- 
rival he  found  they  were  very  dilatory  about 
encouraging  the  matter,  and  with  the  advice  of 
some  friends  he  resolved  to  try  what  might 
be  done  in  Boston." 

On  this  petition,  —  "with  a  view  to  encour- 
age the  aforesaid  manufacture,  and  to  give  the 
said  Somers  an  opportunity  to  give  specimens 
of  his  abilities  to  perfect  the  manufactures  set 
forth  in  his  said  petition, — Resolved,  that  there 
be  paid  out'  of  the  public  treasury,  by  warrant 
from  the  governor  and  council,  twenty  pounds, 
lawful  money,  to  be  applied  to  the  purposes 
aforesaid,  which  sum  shall  be  deposited  in  the 
hands  of  Hugh  Orr,  Esq.,  of  Bridgewater,  who 
shall  be  a  committee  to  superintend  the  appli- 
cation of  the  same." 

Passed  March  8,  1787. 

By  these  proceedings  it  appears,  that,  in  1786 
and  1787,  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts  were 
taking  active  measures  to  encourage  the  intro- 
duction of  cotton  machinery,  and  that  they 
had  succeeded  in  obtaining  machines  and  mod- 
els, probably  including  the  roller-spinning  and 
other  improvements  of  Arkwright,  which  had 
then  been  but  partially  introduced  in  England, 
after  the  failure  of  his  suit  for  establishing  his 
rights  against  Colonel  Mordaunt  in  1781.  — 
Another  action,  having  been  tried  in  1785,  re- 


26       BEVERLY  COTTON  FACTORY. 

suited  in  his  favor;  but  that  decision,  waa  soon 
reversed,  so  that  his  machinery  was  freely  used 
within  a  few  years  of  that  time. 

It  does  not  appear  that  the  machinery  at 
East  Bridgewater  was  used  to  any  extent  for 
manufacturing  purposes,  but  rather  for  models 
and  to  diffuse  information  upon  the  subject ;  and 
the  Legislature  had  provided  in  their  resolve, 
—  "  that  public  notice  be  given  for  three  weeks 
successively  in  Adam's  and  Nurse's  newspaper, 
that  said  machines  may  be  seen  and  examined 
at  the  house  of  the  Hon.  Hugh  Orr  in  Bridge- 
water,  and  that  the  manner  of  working  them 
will  be  explained." 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  machinery  at 
Bridgewater  was  the  first  built  or  introduced 
into  this  country  for  the  manufacture  of  cotton, 
which  included  Arkwright's  roller-spinning  and 
other  patent  improvements. 

A  factory  was  commenced  at  Beverly,  in 
1787,  expressly  for  the  manufacture  of  cotton 
goods,  with  such  machinery  as  could  then  be 
procured  ;  and  finding  the  construction  of  the 
machinery  very  difficult  and  expensive,  and  the 
prospects  very  discouraging,  they  made  appli- 
cation to  the  Legislature  for  aid,  which  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1789,  passed  the  following 

"  Resolve  for  encouraging  the  Cotton  Manu- 
factory at*  Beverly,— Feb.  17,  1789. 


BEVERLY  COTTON  FACTORY.       27 

"  Whereas  it  is  essential  to  the  true  interests 
of  this  Commonwealth  to  encourage  within  the 
same  the  introduction  and  establishment  of 
such  manufactures  as  will  give  the  most  exten- 
sive and  profitable  employment  to  its  citizens, 
and  thereby,  instead  of  those  emigrations  which 
are  ruinous  to  the  State,  increase  the  number 
of  manufacturers,  who  by  consuming  the  pro- 
ductions of  the  soil  will  add  to  the  value  of  it ; 
and  Whereas,  John  Cabot  and  others,  who  have 
been  incorporated  by  the  name  of  '  The  Pro- 
prietors of  the  Beverly  Cotton  Manufactory,' 
have  set  forth  to  this  Court  the  difficulties  and 
extraordinary  expenses  that  attend  the  intro- 
duction of  the  Cotton  Manufactory  to  be  such 
as  require  the  assistance  of  Government :  For 
the  support  and  encouragement  of  said  manu- 
factory ;  Be  it  Resolved,  —  That  there  be  grant- 
ed, and  there  hereby  is  granted  accordingly, 
and  conveyed  to  John  Cabot,  Joshua  Fisher, 
Henry  Higginsou,  Moses  Brown,  George  Cabot, 
Andrew  Cabot,  Israel  Thorndike,  Isaac  Chap- 
man, and  Deborah  Cabot,  they  being  members 
of  the  said  corporation,  the  value  of  Five  hun- 
dred pounds,  lawful  mone}^  in  specie,  to  be  paid 
in  the  Eastern  lands,  the  property  of  this  Com- 
monwealth ;  —  the  said  lands  to  be  valued,  as- 
certained and  conveyed  by  the  Committee  for 
the  sale  thereof;  —  to   have   and  to  hold  the 


28       BEVERLY  COTTON  FACTORY. 

same,  with  the  appurtenances,  to  them  and 
their  heirs  and  assigns  forever,  for  their  use  as 
tenants  in  common  in  the  proportion  following, 
to  wit :  to  the  said  John  Cabot  ten  fortieth 
parts ;  to  the  said  Joshua  Fisher  nine  fortieth 
parts;  to  the  said  Henry  Higginson  four  for- 
tieth parts ;  to  the  said  Moses  Brown  four 
fortieth  parts ;  to  the  said  George  Cabot  four 
fortieth  parts ;  to  the  said  Andrew  Cabot  two 
fortieth  parts;  to  the  said  Israel  Thorndike 
four  fortieth  parts  ;  to  the  said  Isaac  Chapman 
one  fortieth  part ;  and  to  the  said  Deborah 
Cabot  two  fortieth  parts.  Provided,  however, 
that  this  resolve  and  the  grant  aforesaid  shall 
be  void,  and  the  said  land  shall  again  revert  to 
this  Commonwealth,  unless  the  said  corporation 
or  the  said  grantees,  their  heirs  or  assigns,  shall 
manufacture,  within  seven  years  from  the  pas- 
sage of  this  Resolve,  a  quantity  of  cotton  and 
linen  piece-goods,  of  a  quality  usually  imported 
into  this  Commonwealth,  not  less  than  fifty 
thousand  of  yards ;  and  shall  keep  in  a  book 
a  full  and  true  account  of  the  several  kinds  and 
the  quantity  of  each  kind,  and  the  value  of  the 
same,  which  account  shall  be  verified  by  the 
testimony  of  at  least  two  of  the  proprietors,  on 
oath,  and  a  fair  copy  thereof  be  lodged  in  the 
Secretary's  office  ;  —  or  unless  the  said  corpora- 
tion or  the  said  grantees,  their  heirs  or  assigns, 


BEVERLY  COTTON  FACTORY.       29 

shall  pay  to  the  treasurer  of  this  Commonwealth 
five  hundred  pounds  in  gold  or  silver,  within 
eight  years  after  the  passing  of  this  Resolve." 

At  the  same  session  of  the  Legislature  an 
Act  was  passed  to  incorporate  the  "  Beverly 
Manufacturing  Company,"  authorized  to  hold 
personal  property  to  the  amount  of  £80,000, 
and  real  estate  to  the  amount  of  £10,000,  the 
same  parties  being  named  in  the  Act  of  incor- 
poration as  in  the  Resolve  above  quoted,  and 
also  including  the  name  of  Thomas  Somers,  who 
had  petitioned  the  Legislature  in  1787  for  aid 
in  building  cotton  machinery  from  the  designs 
he  had  brought  from  England. 

Besides  the  usual  provisions  in  Acts  of  incor- 
poration, that  for  incorporating  the  Beverly 
Cotton  Manufactory  contained  the  following : 
"  That  all  goods,  which  may  be  manufactured 
by  said  corporation,  shall  have  a  label  of  lead 
affixed  to  one  end  thereof,  which  shall  have 
the  same  impression  with  the  seal  of  the  said 
corporation  ;  and  that  if  any  person  shall 
knowingly  use  a  like  seal  or  label,  with  that 
used  by  said  corporation,  by  annexing  the 
same  to  any  cotton,  or  cotton  and  linen  goods 
not  manufactured  by  said  corporation,  with  a 
view  of  vending  or  disposing  thereof  as  the 
proper  manufactures  of  the  said  corporation, 
every  person  so  offending  shall  forfeit  and  pay 


30       BEVERLY  COTTON  FACTORY. 

treble  the  value  of  such  goods,  to  be  sued  for 
and  recovered  for  the  use  of  said  corporation 
by  action  of  debt  in  any  court  of  record  proper 
to  try  the  same." 

It  appears  that  the  proprietors  had  not 
found  the  grant  of  land,  before  recited,  avail- 
able for  their  purpose,  and  that  in  June,  1790, 
a  petition  was  presented  to  the  Legislature  in 
their  behalf,  signed  by  John  Cabot  and  Joshua 
Fisher,  managers.     They  represent  — 

"  That  they  had  expended  about  four  thou- 
sand pounds,  and  that  the  present  value  of 
their  stock  was  not  equal  to  two  thousand, 
and  that  a  farther  very  considerable  advance- 
ment is  absolutely  necessary ;  that  the  intended 
aid  by  a  grant  of  land  made  by  a  former  legis- 
lature has  not,  in  any  degree,  answered  the 
purpose  of  it,  and  pray  that  in  lieu  of  that 
grant  some  real  and  ready  assistance  may  be 
afforded  them." 

The  petitioners  state,  as  one  of  the  public 
advantages  to  be  derived  from  the  manufac- 
ture of  cotton,  that  the  raw  material  is  pro- 
cured (from  the  West  Indies)  in  exchange 
for  fish,  "the  most  valuable  export  in  posses- 
sion of  the  State."  They  mention  the  extraor- 
dinary cost  of  machines,  intricate  and  difficult 
in  their  construction,  without  any  model  in 
the  country,  and  instance  a  carding-machine 
that  cost  eleven  hundred  dollars. 


WASHINGTON'S   DIARY.  31 

The  petition  was  referred  to  a  committee, 
of  which  Nathaniel  Gorham  was  chairman, 
who  reported,  "  that  the  petitioners  have  a 
grant  of  one  thousand  pounds,  to  be  raised  in 
a  lottery,  on  condition  that  they  give  bonds 
that  the  money  be  actually  appropriated  in 
such  a  way  as  will  most  effectually  promote 
the  manufacturing  of  cotton  piece-goods  in 
this  Commonwealth." 

This  factory  at  Beverly  was  in  operation  at 
the  time  of  Washington's  visit  to  the  North  in 
1789,  as  appears  by  the  following  extract  from 
his  Diary:  "Friday,  30th  October. — A  little 
after  eight  o'clock  I  set  out  (from  Salem)  for 
Newburyport,  and  in  less  than  two  miles 
crossed  the  bridge  between  Salem  and  Bev- 
erly, which  makes  a  handsome  appearance, 
and  is  upon  the  same  plan  of  those  over 
Charles  and  Mystic  rivers,  excepting  that  it 
has  not  footways,  as  that  of  the  former  has. 
The  length  of  the  bridge  is  1530  feet,  and  was 
built  for  about  £4500  lawful  money,  —  a  price 
inconceivably  low  in  my  estimation,  as  there  is 
eighteen  feet  water  in  the  deepest  parts  of  the 
river,  over  which  it  is  erected.  The  bridge 
is  longer  than  that  at  Charlestown,  but  shorter 

by feet  than  the  other  over  Mystic.     All 

of  them  have  drawbridges  by  which  vessels 
pass.      After   passing   Beverly   two   miles,  we 


32  WASHINGTON'S   DIARY. 

come  to  a  cotton  manufactory,  which  seems 
to  be  carrying  on  with  spirit  by  the  Cabots 
(principally).  In  this  manufactory  they  have 
the  new  invented  Carding  and  Spinning  ma- 
chines. One  of  the  first  supplies  the  work, 
and  four  of  the  latter,  one  of  which  spins  84 
threads  at  a  time  by  one  person.  The  cotton 
is  prepared  for  these  machines  by  being  first 
(lightly)  drawn  to  a  thread,  on  the  common 
wheel.  There  is  also  another  machine  for 
doubling  and  twisting  the  threads  for  particu- 
lar cloths ;  this  also  does  many  at  a  time.  For 
winding  the  cotton  from  the  spindles  and  pre- 
paring it  for  the  warp,  there  is  a  reel,  which 
expedites  the  work  greatly.  A  number  of 
looms  (15  or  16)  were  at  work  with  spring 
shuttles,  which  do  more  than  double  work. 
In  short,  the  whole  seemed  perfect,  and  the 
cotton  stuffs  which  they  turn  out  excellent  of 
their  kind  ;  —  warp  and  filling  both  cotton." 

Extract  from  Washington's  Diary,  —  an  edi- 
tion of  which  was  privately  printed,  185b,  for 
Wm.  J.  Davis,  New  York. 

This  factory  was  built  of  brick,  and  was  con- 
tinued in  operation  to  some  extent  for  several 
years.  It  was  driven  by  horse-paw cr ;  and  a 
gentleman  is  still  living,  who  was,  a  few  years 
ago,  a  member  of  Congress,  and  is  yet  an 
active    octogenarian   in   government    employ, 


SAMUEL   W1THERILL  33 

and  who  remembers,  when  a  boy,  occasionally 
driving  a  pair  of  large  bay  horses  to  give  mo- 
tion to  the  wheels. 

I  have  been  thus  particular  in  regard  to  the 
mill  at  Beverly,  because  it  was  the  earliest 
enterprise  undertaken  and  carried  into  execu- 
tion in  this  country  for  manufacturing  cotton, 
and  was  certainly  in  operation  some  time  be- 
fore 1789,  though  Governor  Woodbury,  who 
was  of  a  Beverly  family,  says,  in  his  famous 
report  upon  Cotton,  —  the  first  cotton  factory  built 
in  the  United  States  was  at  Providence  in  1790. 

Mr.  Samuel  Witherill  of  Philadelphia  was 
engaged  at  a  very  early  period  in  commen- 
cing various  manufacturing  operations.  An 
address  was  delivered  by  Tench  Coxe  to  an 
assembly  of  the  friends  of  American  manufac- 
tures, convened  for  the  purpose  of  establishing 
a  Society  for  the  Encouragement  of  the  Useful  Arts, 
August  9,  1787.  The  extent  and  success  of 
the  operations  of  this  society  for  the  first  year 
may  be  seen  by  the  report  of  the  managers  in 
August,  1788,  signed  by  Samuel  Witherill, 
Jr.,  Chairman,  —  in  which  it  is  stated  that  the 
amount  of  cash  received  from  the  contributors 
on  the  23d  of  August  was  £1327  10s.  6d.  j 
that  they  had  purchased  a  quantity  of  flax, 
and  employed  between  two  and  three  hundred 
women  in  spinning  linen  yarn,  and  also  en- 
3 


34  MILL   AT  NORWICH. 

gaged  workmen  to  make  a  carding-engine, 
and  four  jennies,  of  forty,  forty-four,  sixty,  and 
eighty  spindles,  for  spinning  cotton ;  that,  as 
soon  as  the  season  would  permit  the  house  to 
be  fitted  up,  they  were  set  to  work,  but,  owing 
to  various  delays  and  obstructions  thrown  in 
their  way  by  foreign  agents,  it  was  the  12th  of 
April,  1788,  before  they  began  to  weave,  and 
on  the  23d  of  August,  1788,  they  had  made 
11,367  yards  of  various  kinds  of  linen  and  cot- 
ton goods. 

In  1790  a  person,  who  had  been  employed  in 
the  Beverly  factory,  was  engaged  to  go  to 
Norwich,  Connecticut,  to  put  in  operation  some 
cotton  machinery,  which  was  understood  to 
be  similar  to  that  used  at  Beverly.  This  ma- 
chinery was  not  built  in  this  country,  but  was 
supposed  to  have  been  imported,  by  some 
means,  from  England.  The  parties  engaged 
in  the  business  at  Norwich  were  Mr.  Hunting- 
ton, Dr.  Lathrop,  and  others.  This  Dr.  Lathrop 
was  the  same  in  whose  druggist's  shop  Bene- 
dict Arnold  is  said  to  have  been  employed, 
before  the  Revolutionary  War.  —  See  Spar/es's 
American  Biography,  Vol.  III. 

Another  cotton  mill  in  Connecticut  was  built 
in  the  west  part  of  New  Haven,  in  1794,  by 
John  R  Livingston  and  David  Dickson,  of  New 
York.     Previous  to  this  time  they  had  a  small 


SPINNING  IN   PHILADELPHIA.  35 

mill  not  far  from  Hurlgate,  on  the  New  York 
side  ;  —  the  machinery  was  moved  to  New 
Haven,  and  was  in  full  operation  in  1795.  In 
1807  this  was  converted  into  a  woollen-mill, 
and  since  into  a  paper-mill. 

In  1806  General  Humphrey  built  his  mill 
at  Derby  (since  Humphreysville),  both  for 
cotton  and  woollen. 

William  Pollard  of  Philadelphia  obtained  a 
patent  for  cotton-spinning,  Dec.  30,  1791, 
which  was  the  first  water-frame  put  in  motion 
in  Pennsylvania.  Whether  he  obtained  his 
patterns  direct  from  England,  or  by  the  way 
of  Providence,  is  not  certain,  or  whether  the 
machinery  was  capable  of  being  put  in  success- 
ful operation  may  be  doubtful,  for  the  business 
failed  at  a  time  when  the  machinery  of  Slater 
was  producing  great  profits.  It  was,  however, 
an  early  attempt  at  the  introduction  of  water- 
spinning  in  that  part  of  the  country,  and  its 
want  of  success  probably  retarded  the  prog- 
ress of  cotton-spinning  in  Philadelphia.  Some 
accounts  say  the  mill  was  burned. 

In  1808  the  Globe  factory,  with  a  capital 
of  *<S0,000,  was  established  under  Dr.  Redman 
Coxe,  of  Philadelphia. 

The  Arkwright  machinery  was  introduced 
very  early,  at  Copp's  Creek,  Delaware,  by 
Goodfellow  ;  also  at  Kirkinill,  near  Wilmington. 


36  MILLS   AT  PATERSOX. 

A  magnificent  scheme  was  projected  for  a 
manufacturing  establishment  at  Paterson,  New 
Jersey,  and  a  charter  was  obtained  through 
the  interest  of  Alexander  Hamilton,  granting, 
it  is  said,  besides  the  usual  powers  of  a  manu- 
facturing corporation,  banking  privileges,  and 
the  corporate  powers  of  a  city.  A  number  of 
individuals  from  New  York,  New  Jersey,  and 
Pennsylvania  had  associated  and  raised  a  cap- 
ital of  about  two  hundred  thousand  dollars, 
and  obtained  extensive  rights  in  the  Great 
Falls  of  the  Passaic.  They  were  incorporated 
by  the  Legislature  of  New  Jersey,  November 
22,  1791,  by  the  name  of  "The  Society  for 
the  Establishment  of  Useful  Manufactures,"  and 
the  Company  was  organized  at  New  Brunswick 
during  the  same  month.  In  May,  1792,  they 
selected  the  site  for  their  operations,  and  on 
the  fourth  of  July  made  appropriations  for 
building  factories,  machine  shops,  and  print- 
works, and  for  the  extensive  use  of  water- 
power  from  the  Passaic  falls. 

The  construction  of  their  canals  was  confided 
to  Major  L'Enfant,*  a  French  engineer,  whose 
gigantic   schemes  were  far  ^beyond    the   pecu- 

*  The  same  who  was  originally  employed  by  Gen.  Washing- 
ton to  survey  and  lay  out  the  City  of  Washington,  but  who  had 
some  difficulty  with  the  Commissioners  before  the  business  was 
finished.  —  Sparks's  Life  of  Washington,  Vol.  X.  p.  204. 


SPINNING   AT  PROVIDENCE.  37 

niary  means  of  the  Company,  so  that  in  1793 
the  business  was  put  under  the  charge  of  Peter 
Colt,  then  Comptroller  of  the  State  of  Connec- 
ticut, who  completed  the  watercourses,  and 
built  a  factory,  in  which  they  commenced 
spinning  cotton  yarn  in  1794. 

In  the  life  of  Samuel  Slater  a  very  partic- 
ular account  is  given,  by  William  Anthony, 
of  the  first  attempts  to  introduce  cotton  ma- 
chinery at  Providence.  He  says  :  "  About  the 
year  1788  Daniel  Anthony,  Andrew  Dexter, 
and  Lewis  Peck,  all  of  Providence,  entered  into 
an  agreement  to  make  what  was  then  called 
homespun  cloth.  The  idea  at  first  was  to  spin 
by  hand,  and  make  jeans  with  linen  warp  and 
cotton  filling ;  but  hearing  that  Mr.  Orr  of 
Bridgewater,  Mass.,  had  imported  some  models 
of  machinery  from  England  for  the  purpose 
of  spinning  cotton,  it  was  agreed  that  Daniel 
Anthony  should  go  to  Bridgewater  and  get  a 
draft  of  the  model  of  said  machine.  He,  in 
company  with  John  Reynolds  of  East  Green- 
wich, who  had  been  doing  something  in  the 
manufacturing  of  wool,  went  to  Bridgewater 
and  found  the  model  of  the  machine  spoken 
of  in  possession  of  Mr.  Orr,  but  not  in  oper- 
ation. It  was  not  the  intention  of  Mr.  Orr  to 
operate  it,  but  he  only  kept  it  for  the  inspec- 
tion of  those  who  might  have  an  inclination 
to  take  drafts." 


38  THOMAS   SOMERS. 

This  model  of  the  machine  was  very  imper- 
fect, and  was  said  to  be  taken  from  one  of  the 
first  built  in  England.  A  draft  of  this  machine 
was  accordingly  taken,  and  laid  aside  for  a 
while.  They  then  proceeded  to  build  a  ma- 
chine of  a  different  construction,  called  a  jenny. 
I  understood  that  a  model  of  this  machine  was 
brought  from  England  into  Beverly,  Massa- 
chusetts, by  a  man  by  the  name  of  *  Summers. 
This  jenny  had  twenty-eight  spindles,  .... 
was  finished  in  1787.  t  It  was  first  set  up  in 
a  private  house,  and  afterwards  removed  to 
the  market-house  chamber  in  Providence,  and 
operated  there. 

Joshua  Lindly  of  Providence  was  then  en- 
gaged to  build  a  carding-machine  for  carding 
the  cotton,  agreeably  to  the  draft  presented, 
obtained    also    from    Beverly.       This   machine 

*  We  here  trace  to  Beverly  the  Thomas  Soyners  who  went  to 
England  from  Baltimore,  in  1785,  for  the  purpose  of  procuring 
the  English  machinery,  and  to  whom  the  grant  of  £20  was  made 
by  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts,  March  8,  1787,  to  be  ex- 
pended under  the  direction  of  Mr.   Orr. 

f  There  must  be  a  mistake  in  the  year,  as  he  says  above  that 
Dexter  and  others,  for  whom  this  machinery  was  built,  entered 
into  their  agreement  about  1 788.  This  should  be,  in  all  probabil- 
ity, 1 789,  for  the  time  when  the  jenny  was  finished.  A  further 
confirmation  of  this  date  is  that  Somers  received  from  the  Legis- 
lature of  Massachusetts,  March  8,  1787,  a  grant  to  enable  him 
to  complete  his  models ;  and  it  must  have  been  after  this  time 
that  he  builfrthe  machines  at  Beverly  from  which  those  at  Provi- 
dence were  designed. 


SPINNING   FRAMES.  39 

was  something  similar  to  the  one  now  used 
for  carding  wool,  the  cotton  being  taken  off 
the  machine  in  rolls,  and  roped  by  hand.  After 
some  delay  this  machine  was  finished.  They 
then  proceeded  to  build  a  spinning-frame  after 
the  draft  obtained  at  Bridgewater.  This  ma- 
chine was  something  similar  to  the  water-frame 
now  in  use,  but  very  imperfect.  It  consisted 
of  eight  heads  of  four  spindles  each,  —  being 
thirty-two  spindles  in  all,  —  and  was  operated 
by  a  crank  turned  by  hand The  spin- 
ning-frame, after  being  tried  some  time  in 
Providence,  was  carried  to  Pawtucket  and 
attached  to  a  wheel  propelled  by  water.  The 
work  of  turning  the  machine  was  too  laborious 
to  be  done  by  hand,  and  the  machine  was  too 
imperfect  to  be  turned  by  water.  Soon  after 
this  the  machine  was  sold  to  Mr.  Moses  Brown 
of  Providence ;  but  as  all  the  carding  and 
roping  was  done  by  hand,  it  was  very  imper- 
fect, and  but  little  could  be  done. 

This  was  the  situation  of  cotton  manufac- 
turing in  Ehode  Island  when  Mr.  Samuel 
Slater  arrived  in  this  country ;  —  then  all 
this  imperfect  machinery  was  thrown  aside, 
and  machinery  more  perfect  built  under  his 
direction. 

The  spinning  machinery  described  as  build- 
ing  at    Philadelphia    was    stated    to   be    four 


40  SPINNING   FRAMES. 

.spinning-jennies  of  forty,  forty-four,  sixty,  and 
eighty  spindles.  That  at  Beverly  is  supposed 
to  be  of  the  same  character,  and  that  also 
which  was  put  in  operation  at  the  market- 
house  in  Providence,  which  is  described  as  a 
jenny  with  twenty-eight  spindles,  built  after 
the  model  of  that  at  Beverly,  and  which  Mr. 
Anthony  states  to  be  on  a  different  construc- 
tion from  the  one  at  Bridgewater.  So  that  in 
all  these  cases  it  is  very  evident  that  spinning 
by  the  jenny  alone  was  attempted.  But  the 
spinning-machine  built  after  the  model  of  that 
in  the  possession  of  Mr.  Orr,  and  built  by  Barr, 
appears  to  have  been  an  attempt  to  introduce 
the  Arkwright  machinery.  Mr.  Anthony  de- 
scribes it  as  similar  to  the  water-frame  now 
in  use ;  says  it  consisted  of  eight  heads,  of  four 
spindles  each ;  that  it  was  operated  by  a 
crank,  in  neither  of  which  particulars  would 
it  agree  with  the  jenny,  or  any  other  spinning- 
machine  known  to  have  been  in  use ;  but  the 
description,  as  far  as  it  goes,  would  apply  to 
the  Arkwright  spinning-frame,  though  he  omits 
the  great  feature  of  Arkwright's  spinning,  the 
drawing  or  extension  of  the  thread  by  means 
of  rollers. 

It  is  possible  that  Robert  and  Alexander 
Barr  may  have  obtained  such  a  knowledge  of 
Arkwright's  machinery  after  the  failure  of  his 


SAMUEL   SLATER.  41 

suit  iu  1781,  that  they  thought  themselves 
able  to  construct  his  water-frame. 

Samuel  Slater  at  the  age  of  twenty-one 
sailed  from  London  on  the  13th  of  September, 
J  789,  and  arrived  at  New  York  in  November. 
He  seems  to  have  had  a  design  of  coming  to 
America  for  some  time,  and  what  finally  deter- 
mined him  was  his  observing  in  a  Philadelphia 
paper  a  reward  offered  by  a  society  for  a  ma- 
chine to  make  cotton  rollers.  *  We  see  here,  I 
suppose,  the  effect  of  an  advertisement  of  the 
"  Pennsylvania  Society  for  promoting  the  useful 
Arts"  mentioned  above. 

Soon  after  his  arrival  in  New  York,  he  wrote 
to  Moses  Brown  as  follows  :  — 

"  New  York,  December  2,  1  789. 

"  Sir  :  A  few  days  ago  I  was  informed  that 
you  wanted  a  manager  of  cotton  spinning,  in 
which  business  I  flatter  myself  that  I  can  give 
the  greatest  satisfaction  in  making  machinery, 
making  as  good  yarn,  either  for  stockings  or 
twist,  as  any  that  is  made  in  England,  as  I 
have  had  opportunity  and  an  oversight  of  Sir 
Richard  Arkwright's  works,  and  in  Mr.  Strutt's 
mill  upwards  of  eight  years.  If  you  are  not 
provided  for,  should  be    glad    to    serve    you; 

*  Probably  this  was  intended  to  indicate  a  machine  for  roller- 
spinnin'j. 


42  ALMY    AND    BROWN. 

though  I  am  in  the  New  York  manufactory, 
and  have  been  for  three  weeks,  since  I  arrived 
from  England.  But  we  have  only  one  card, 
two  machines,  two  spinning-jennies,  which  I 
think  are  not  worth  using.  My  encourage- 
ment is  pretty  good,  but  should  much  rather 
have  the  care  of  perpetual  carding  and  spinning. 
My  intention  is  to  erect  a  perpetual  card  and 
spinning  (meaning  the  Arkwright  patents).  If 
you  please  to  drop  a  line  respecting  the  amount 
of  encouragement  you  wish  to  give,  by  favor 
of  Captain  Brown,  you  will  much  oblige,  sir, 
"Your  most  obedient  humble  servant, 
"Samuel  Slater. 
"  Please  direct  to  me  at  No.  37  Golden  Hill." 

The  reply  of  Mr.  Brown  is  given  as  follows:  — 

"  Providence,  10  —  12th  Month,  1781. 

"  Friend  :  I  received  thine  of  the  2d,  and 
observe  its  contents.  I,  or  rather  Aliny  and 
Brown,  who  have   the  business  in  the  cotton 

line, want  the  assistance  of  a  person 

skilled  in  the  frame-  or  water-spinning.  An  ex- 
periment has  been  made,  which  has  failed,  no 
person  being  acquainted  with  the  business,  and 
the  frames  imperfect.  Thy  being  already  en- 
gaged in  a  factory  with  many  able  proprietors, 
we  can  hardly  expect  we  can  give  thee  en- 
couragement adequate  to  leaving  thy  present 


MOSES   BROWN.  43 

employ.  As  the  frame  we  have  is  the  first 
attempt  of  the  kind  that  has  been  made  in 
America,  it  is  too  imperfect  to  afford  much 
encouragement.  We  hardly  know  what  to  say 
to  thee,  but  if  thou  thought  thou  could'st  per- 
fect and  conduct  them  to  profit,  if  thou  wilt 
come  and  do  it,  thou  shalt  have  all  the  profits 
made  of  them,  over  and  above  the  interest  of 
the  money  they  cost  and  the  wear  and  tear  of 
them.  We  will  find  stock  and  be  repaid  in 
yarn,  as  we  may  agree  for  six  months,  and  this 
we  do  for  the  information  thou  canst  give  if 

fully  acquainted  with  the  business If 

thy  present  situation  does  not  come  up  to 
what  thou  wishest,  and  from  thy  knowledge 
can  be  ascertained  of  the  advantages  of  the 
mills  so  as  to  induce  thee  to  come  and  work 
ours  and  have  the  credit  as  well  as  the  advan- 
tage of  perfecting  the  first  water-mill  in  Amer- 
ica, we  should  be  glad  to  engage  thy  care,  so 
long  as  they  can  be  made  profitable  to  both, 
and  we  can  agree. 

"  I  am,  for  myself  and  Almy  &  Brown, 
"  Thy  friend, 

"Moses  Brown." 

The  following  appears  as  an  extract  from  a 
letter  to  Slater  under  the  same  date,  Avhich 
gives  some  particulars  of  the  cotton  machinery 


44  SAMUEL  SLATER. 

at  Providence  before  the  arrival  of  Slater. 
-  We  have  two  machines  of  this  kind,  one  of 
thirty-two  spindles,  and  one  of  twenty-four. 
The}'  have  been  worked,  and  spun  about  one 
hundred  and  fifty  skeins  of  cotton  yarn,  from 
five  to  eight  skeins  (of  fifteen  lays  round  a  reel 
of  two  yards)  to  the  pound.  But  the  person 
we  let  the  mill  to  being  unacquainted  with  the 
business,  and  the  mill  probably  not  perfected, 
he  could  not  make  wages  in  attending  them, 
and  therefore  they  are  at  present  still.  We 
then  wrought  hand-roping,  as  the  carding  ma- 
chine was  not  in  order.  We  have  since  got  a 
jenny,  and  are  putting  on  fine  cards  to  the  ma- 
chine. These,  with  one  eighty-four  and  a  sixty 
spinning-jenny,  and  a  doubling  and  twisting 
jenny,  compose  the  principal  machinery  about 
our  factory." 

In  consequence  of  this  correspondence,  Sla- 
ter soon  left  New  York  and  came  to  Provi- 
dence. A  letter  from  Smith  Wilkinson,  "  Life 
of  Slater,"  p.  76,  gives  an  account  of  his  first 
visit  to  Pawtucket,  and  some  particulars  of  the 
manufacturing  business.  He  says :  tt  Samuel 
Slater  came  to  Pawtucket  early  in  January 
1790,  in  company  with  Moses  Brown,  William 
Almy,  Obadiah  Brown,  and  Smith  Brown, 
who  did  a  small  business  in  Providence  at 
manufacturing   on   billies  and  jennies   driven 


SPINNING  IN   PROVIDENCE.  45 

by  men,  as  were  also  the  carding-machines.  .  .  . 
There  was  a  spinning-frame  in  the  building, 
which  used  to  stand  on  the  southwest  abut- 
ment of  Pawtucket  bridge,  which  "was  started 
for  trial  (after  it  was  built  for  Andrew  Dexter 
and  Lewis  Peck)  by  Joseph  and  Richard  An- 
thony,  but  the  machine  was  very  imperfect  and 
made  very  uneven  yarn.  The  cotton  for  this 
experiment  was  carded  by  hand,  and  roped  on 
a  woollen  wheel  by  a  female." 

"  Mr.  Slater  entered  into  a  contract  with 
William  Almy  and  Smith  Brown,  and  com- 
menced building  a  water-frame  of  twenty-four 
spindles,  two  carding-machines,  and  the  draw- 
ing and  roping  frames  necessary  to  prepare  for 
the  spinning,  and  soon  after  added  a  frame  of 
forty-eight  spindles.  He  commenced  [spin- 
ning?] some  time  in  the  fall  of  1790,  or  early 
in  1791.  I  was  then  in  my  tenth  year,  and 
went  to  work  for  him,  and  began  at  tending; 
the  breaker.  The  mode  of  laying  the  cotton 
was  by  the  hand,  taking  up  a  handful  and  pull- 
ing it  apart  with  both  hands,  and  shifting  it  all 
into  the  right  hand,  to  get  the  staple  of  the 
cotton  straight,  and  fix  the  handful  so  as  to 
hold  it  firm,  and  then  applying  it  to  the  surface 
of  the  breaker,  moving  the  hand  horizontally 
across  the  card  to  and  fro,  until  the  cotton  was 
fully  prepared." 


46       DUTY  ON  COTTON  GOODS. 

The  description  of  this  operation  shows  the 
rude  state  of  the  Arkwright  machinery  as  in- 
troduced by  Slater  at  that  time. 

A  letter  from  Moses  Brown  of  the  19th  of 
April,  1791,  addressed  to  Moses  Brown  of  Bev- 
erly, "  To  be  communicated  to  the  proprietors 
of  the  Beverly  factory,"  says:  "I  have  for  some 
time  thought  of  addressing  the  Beverly  manu- 
facturers on  the  subject  of  an  application  to 
Congress  for  some  encouragement  to  the  cot- 
ton  manufacture  by  an  additional  duty  on  the 
cotton  goods  imported,  and  the  applying  such 
duty  as  a  bounty,  partly  for  raising  and  soring 
cotton  in  the  Southern  States,  of  a  quality  and  clean- 
ness suitable  to  be  tvrought  by  machines,*  and  partly 
as  a  bounty  on  cotton  goods  of  the  kind  manu- 
factured in  the  United  States ;  .  .  .  .  and  it  is 
the  desire  of  those  concerned  this  way,  that 
you,  being  the  first  and  largest,  would  take  the 
lead,  and  devise  such  plan  as  may  be  most  eli- 
gible to  effect  the  purpose.  Almy  and  Brown, 
who  conduct  the  business  of  the  cotton  manu- 
factory, with  an  English  workman  from  Ark- 

*  When  Slater  first  began  to  spin,  he  used  Cayenne  and  Suri- 
nam cotton,  but  after  a  few  years  he  began  to  mix  about  one  third 
of  Southern  cotton  ;  and  this  yarn  was  designated  as  second  quality 
and  sold  at  a  price  accordingly. 

Hamilton,  in  his  report  on  manufactures,  says  :  "  The  extensive 
cultivation  of  cotton  can  perhaps  hardly  be  expected,  but  from  the 
previous  establishment  of  domestic  manufactories  of  the  article." 


MACHINERY  IN   RHODE  ISLAND.  47 

wright's  works,  have  completed  the  water  spin- 
ning machines  to  the  perfection  to  make  the 
enclosed  yarn, —  the  former  mills,  which  I  had 
purchased,  made  from  the  States  model  at 
Bridgewater,  proving  not  to  answer." 

Another  letter  from  Moses  Brown,  of  October 
15,  1791,  addressed  to  John  Dexter,  gives  an 
account  of  the  early  proceedings  in  Ehode 
Island  in  manufacturing,  as  follows  :  "  In  the 
spring  of  1789,  some  persons  in  Providence 
had  procured  to  be  made  a  carding-machine,  a 
jenny,  and  a  spinning-frame  to  work  by  hand, 
after  the  manner  of  Arkwright's  invention, 
taken  principally  from  models  belonging  to 
the  State  of  Massachusetts,  which  were  made 
at  their  expense  by  two  persons  from  Scotland, 
who  took  their  ideas  from  observation  and  not 
from  experience  in  the  business.  These  ma- 
chines, made  here,  not  answering  the  purpose 
and  expectation  of  the  proprietors,  and  I  being 
desirous  of  perfecting  them,  if  possible,  and  the 
business  of  the  cotton  manufacture,  so  as  to  be 
useful  to  the  country,  I  purchased  them,  and 
by  great  alterations  the  carding-machine  and 
jenny  were  made  to  answer.  The  frames,  with 
one  other,  on  nearly  the  same  construction, 
made  from  the  same  model,  and  tried  without 
success  at  East  Greenwich,  which  I  also  pur- 
chased, I  attempted  to  set  to  work  by  water, 


48  FIRST   ARK  WRIGHT  MACHINERY. 

and  made  a  little  yarn,  so  as  to  answer  for 
warps ;  but  being  so  imperfect,  both  as  to  qual- 
ity and  quantity  of  the  yarn,  their  use  was 
suspended  until  I  could  procure  a  person  who 
had  wrought  or  seen  them  wrought  in  Europe. 

"  Late  in  the  fall  I  received  a  letter  from  a 
3^oung  man,  then  lately  arrived  at  New  York, 
from  Ark wright's  works  in  England,  informing 
me  of  his  situation,  that  he  could  hear  of  no 
perpetual  spinning  mills  on  the  continent  but 
mine,  and  proposed  to  come  and  work  them. 
I  wrote  him,  and  he  came  accordingly ;  but  on 
viewing  the  mills,  he  declined  doing  anything 
with  them,  and  proposed  making  a  new  one, 
using  such  parts  of  the  old  as  would  answer."  .  . 

He  proceeds  to  say  that  they  contracted 
with  him  "  to  direct  and  make  a  mill  in  his 
own  way,  which  he  did." 

From  the  foregoing  it  appears  very  evident 
that  all  the  first  cotton  machinery  introduced 
at  Beverly,  Providence,  Paterson,  and  Philadel- 
phia, was  confined  to  the  spinning-jenny,  and 
such  improvements  as  had  been  introduced  be- 
fore the  invention  of  Arkwright,  and  that  the 
first  Arkwright  machinery  was  that  built  by 
Barr  at  Bridgewater,  which  was  probabty  too 
imperfect  to  be  put  to  any  profitable  use,  so 
that  to  Slater  justly  belongs  the  credit  of  the 
successful  introduction   of  the  Arkwright  ma- 


SECOND  MILL  BY  SLATER.        49 

chinery,  and   the   establishment  of  the  cotton 
manufacture  in  this  country. 

The  second  cotton  mill  built  by  Mr.  Slater, 
called  the  "White  Mill,"  was  within  the  limits 
of  Massachusetts,  on  the  east  side  of  Pawtucket 
River,  in  what  was  then  the  town  of  Rehoboth. 
At  the  session  of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature 
in  June  1799,  —  "on  the  petition  of  Samuel 
Slater,  stating  his  intention  to  establish  a  cot- 
ton mill  in  Rehoboth,"  —  an  Act  was  passed, 
providing  "that  all  buildings  that  may  be 
erected  in  said  town  for  the  purpose  of  a  cot- 
ton mill,  together  with  the  materials  and  stock 
employed  in  the  manufacture  of  cotton,  be,  and 
the  same  are  hereby  exempted  from  taxes  of 
every  kind,  during  the  term  of  seven  years 
from  the  first  day  of  April  next."  (Passed 
June  22,  1799.)  This  was  the  first  mill  on  the 
Arkwright  system  erected  in  Massachusetts, 
and  must  be  the  same  referred  to  in  the  Life 
of  Slater,  where  it  is  stated  that  in  1798  he 
entered  into  partnership  with  Oziel  Wilkinson, 
Timothy  Green,  and  William  Wilkinson,  and 
built  a  second  mill  on  the  east  side  of  Paw- 
tucket River; —  and  though  the  Act  was  passed 
in  1799,  the  building  may  have  been  in  prog- 
ress in  1798. 

Until  this  time  the  business  had  been  con- 
fined to  Mr.  Slater  and  his  associates,  but  soon 
4 


50  FIRST  MILL   IX   NEW   HAMPSHIRE. 

after  this,  it  is  stated  that  several  of  his  men, 
who  had  become  acquainted  with  the  construc- 
tion of  his  machinery,  left  his  employment  and 
commenced  the  erection  of  mills  for  themselves 
or  other  parties.  Mr.  Benj.  S.  Wolcott  was  em- 
ployed by  Mr.  Slater  in  the  construction  of  his 
first  mill.  After  acquiring  sufficient  knowledge 
of  the  business,  he  united  with  Rufus  and  Elisha 
Waterman,  for  the  purpose  of  erecting  a  cotton 
factory  in  Cumberland,  about  1801.  The  ma- 
chinery was  afterwards  removed  to  Central 
Falls,  a  short  distance  above  Pawtucket,  and  a 
new  company  formed,  with  the  addition  of  Mr. 
Stephen  Jenks. 

Another  of  his  workmen  by  the  name  of 
Bobbins  commenced  a  mill  in  New  Ipswich, 
which  was  put  in  operation  in  1804,  being  the 
first  cotton  mill  built  in  New  Hampshire. 

The  "  History  of  Rehoboth,"  which  should 
be  the  best  authority  on  the  subject,  says : 
"  The  first  cotton  factory  that  was  erected 
upon  the  east  side  of  the  river  in  the  village 
of  Pawtucket  was  the  'Yellow  Mill,'  built  in 
1805."  The  first  cotton  mill  on  the  east  side 
of  the  river,  and  in  Massachusetts,  was  that 
before  mentioned  in  1798,  or  1799,  —  and  the 
second  mill  was  built  there  in  1805 ;  for  I  find 
an  Act  passed  by  the  Legislature  of  Massachu- 
setts, June  14,  1805,  providing  "that  all  the 


MR.    GALLATIN'S   REPORT.  51 

buildings  that  are  or  may  be  erected  in  the 
town  of  Rehoboth  by  Eliphalet  Slack,  Oliver 
Starkweather,  Eleaser  Tyler,  2d,  Elijah  Ingra- 
ham.  and  others,  for  the  purpose  of  establishing 
a  cotton  manufactory  in  said  town,  and  all  the 
materials  and  stock  to  be  employed  in  the 
manufacture  of  cotton,  be,  and  the  same  are 
hereby  exempted  from  all  taxes  of  every  kind 
for  and  during  the  term  of  five  years,  from  and 
after  the  passing  of  this  Act." 

In  one  of  these  early  mills  at  Pawtucket,  B. 
S.  Wblcott,  Jr.  was  employed,  who  with  the  as- 
sistance of  his  father,  in  1807  or  1808,  built 
the  first  cotton  mill  in  Oneida  County,  New 
York,  four  miles  west  of  Utica.  Some  years 
later,  Mr.  Wolcott,  associated  with  Benj.  and 
Joseph  Marshall,  formerly  English  merchants  in 
New  York,  erected  the  "New  York  Mills."  Mr, 
Gallatin,  in  his  report  on  manufactures,  April  17, 
1810,  is  probably  mistaken  in  saying  "after  the 
first  cotton  mill  was  erected  in  Rhode  Island  in 
17913  another  in  the  same  State  was  built  in 
1795,  and  two  more  in  the  State  of  Massachu- 
setts in  1803  and  1804."  He  may  be  more 
correct  in  what  follows :  "  During  the  three 
succeeding  years,  ten  were  erected  or  com- 
menced in  Rhode  Island,  and  one  in  Connec- 
ticut, making  altogether  fifteen  mills  erected 
before   the  year   1808,  working,  at   that  time 


52       COTTON  MILL  AT  BEVERLY. 

8,000  spindles.  Returns  have  been  received  of 
87  mills,  which  were  erected  at  the  end  of  the 
year  1809,  sixty-two  of  which  were  in  opera- 
tion, and  worked  31,000  spindles,  and  the  other 
twenty-five  will  be  in  operation  in  the  course 
of  the  year  1810." 

The  first  cotton  mill  in  the  vicinity  of  Bos- 
ton, and  the  first  in  Massachusetts  after  that 
built  by  Slater  at  Rehoboth,  was  a  small  estab- 
lishment on  Bass  River  in  Beverly,  which  was 
in  operation  in  the  fall  of  1801,  or  early  in 
1802,  with  six  water  frames,  of  seventy-two 
spindles  each.  The  machinery  was  built  at 
Paterson,  New  Jersey,  by  a  man  of  the  name  of 
Clark,  who  came  to  Beverly  to  put  it  in  opera- 
tion. The  business  was  unsuccessful  on  ac- 
count of  the  insufficiency  of  the  water-power 
and  other  causes,  and  the  mill  continued  in 
operation  but  two  or  three  years.  Thus  it  ap- 
pears that  Beverly,  though  never  engaged  in 
the  cotton  manufacture  very  extensively  or 
with  much  profit,  was  the  pioneer  in  the  busi- 
ness, not  only  in  building  the  first  factory  in 
1787,  but  the  first  after  Slater  in  extending  the 
use  of  the  Arkwright  machinery  in  Massa- 
chusetts. 

In  1806  John  Slater,  the  brother  of  Samuel, 
had  arrived  from  England,  and  united  with 
Samuel  and  otfiers  in  building,  at  Smithfield, 


FACTORIES  IN   RHODE  ISLAND.  53 

the  establishment  now  called  Slatersville.  He 
removed  to  this  place  in  Jime  1806,  and  took 
charge  of  the  concern;  and  in  the  spring  of  1807 
the  works  were  sufficiently  advanced  to  com- 
mence spinning. 

In  1807,  Mr.  Zachariah  Allen  estimated  the 
whole  number  of  spindles  in  operation  in  the 
United  States  at  about  four  thousand. 

By  this  time  the  manufacturing  of  cotton 
was  extending  itself,  and  factories  were  built  in 
many  of  the  towns  near  Providence,  both  in 
Massachusetts  and  Rhode  Island,  so  that  in 
1809,  according  to  Benedict's  "History  of  Rhode 
Island,"  there  were  seventeen  cotton  mills  in 
operation  within  the  town  of  Providence  and  its 
vicinity,  working  14,296  spindles,  and  at  the 
commencement  of  the  war  with  Great  Britain, 
in  1812,  there  were  said  to  be,  within  thirty 
miles  of  Providence  in  the  State  of 

Rhode  Island,  33  factories,         30,660  spindles, 
Massachusetts,  20  "  17,370  " 

making         53  u      with  48,030  " 

The  statistics  of  Tench  Coxe,  from  the  census 
of  1810,  give  for  the  State  of  Rhode  Island  — 

Cotton  factories,  28;  spindles,  21,178. 

According  to  an  account  taken  by  John  H. 
Pitman,  of  Providence,  there  were  in  the  State 
of  Rhode  Island  in  1810  thirty-nine  factories, 


54  WALTHAM   COMPANY. 

in  which  were  more  than  thirty  thousand  spin- 
dles. 

Soon  after  1806  a  number  of  factories  were 
built  in  various  parts  of  Massachusetts. 

February  27,  1807,  an  exemption  from  taxes 
for  five  years  was  granted  by  Act  of  the  Legis- 
lature for  a  cotton  mill,  erected  at  Watertown 
by  Seth  Bemis  and  Jeduthan  Fuller. 

June  20,  1807,  a  factory  was  incorporated  at 
Fitchburg. 

March  12,  1808,  the  Norfolk .  Cotton  Manu- 
factory at  Dedham  was  incorporated. 

An  association  was  formed  January  1,  1811, 
for  building  a  mill  at  Dorchester  with  two  thou- 
sand spindles,  and  incorporated  June  13,  1811, 
with  a  capital  of  $60,000. 

February  23,  1813,  an  Act  was  passed  to  in- 
corporate the  Boston  Manufacturing  Company, 
better  known  as  the  Waltham  Company,  for 
the  "  purpose  of  manufacturing  cotton,  wool- 
len, or  linen  goods."  Instead  of  the  customary 
designation  of  their  place  of  business  in  the 
Act  of  incorporation,  it  authorizes  them  to  con- 
duct their  business  at  Boston  in  the  County  of 
Suffolk,  or  within  fifteen  miles  thereof,  or  at 
any  other  place  or  places,  not  exceeding  four. 
Capital,  $400,000. 

The  business  was  commenced  in  New  Hamp- 
shire, as  before  stated,  at  New  Ipswich  in  1804. 


MILLS   IN   NEW   HAMPSHIRE.  ;,;, 

The  original  proprietors  of  the  first  mill  were 
Ephraim  Hartwell,  Charles  Barrett,  and  Ben- 
jamin Champnev. 

In  1807  another  mill  was  commenced  upon 
the  same  stream,  the  Souhegan,  by  Seth  Nason, 
Jesse  Holton,  and  Samuel  Batchelder,  and  put 
in  operation  in  1808.  These  were  the  first  cot- 
ton mills  built  in  the  State  of  New  Hampshire, 
and  contained  about  five  hundred  spindles 
each.  In  1805  the  Legislature  granted  to  the 
proprietors  of  the  first  mill  an  exemption  from 
taxes  for  five  years,  and  in  1808  the  same  ex- 
emption to  the  proprietors  of  the  second  mill.* 

In  December  1808,  the  Legislature  of  New 
Hamphire,  by  a  general  law,  granted  the  same 
encouragement  to  those  who  should  erect  works 
for  the  manufacture  of  cotton,  wool,  salt,  or 
glass.  At  the  same  session  Acts  were  passed 
for  the  incorporation  of  the  Peterborough  Cot- 
ton Manufactory,  and  for  the  Exeter  Cotton 
Manufactory.  In  1809  were  incorporated  the 
second  Peterborough  Cotton  Factory,  and  an- 
other in  Chesterfield. 

In  1810,  one  was  incorporated  in  Milford. 
one  in  Swanzey,  one  in  Cornish,  one  in  Pem- 
broke, and  one  at  Amoskeag  Falls. 

In  1811,  one  at  Walpole,  one  at  Hillsbor- 
OUgh,  one  at  Meredith,  and  also  a  third  at 
*  History  of  New  Ipswich,  \<p.  224,  225. 


56 


MILLS   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES. 


Peterborough.  Most  of  these  mills  went  into 
operation  within  about  a  year  from  the  time  of 
their  incorporation,  so  that  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  war  with  Great  Britain,  in  1812, 
there  were,  probably  fifteen  cotton  mills  in 
operation  in  New  Hampshire,  averaging  not 
more  than  500  spindles  in  each,  or  not  more 
than  six  or  seven  thousand  in  all. 

The  first  cotton  mill  in  the  State  of  Maine, 
then  comprised  in  Massachusetts,  was  built  at 
Brunswick  in  1809,  and  soon  after,  another  was 
erected  at  Gardiner. 

Tench  Coxe,  in  his  report  of  the  census  of 
1810,  gives  the  number  of  cotton  factories  in 
New  Hampshire  at  twelve,  of  which  eight  were 
in  the  County  of  Hillsborough. 

The  number  given  in  other  States  was  as 
follows :  — 


Massachusetts, 

fifty-four. 

Pennsylvania, 

sixty-f< 

Vermont, 

one. 

Delaware, 

three. 

Rhode  Island, 

twenty-eight. 

Maryland, 

eleven, 

Connecticut, 

fourteen. 

Ohio, 

two. 

New  York, 

twenty-six. 

Kentucky, 

fifteen. 

New  Jersey, 

four. 

Tennessee, 

four. 

None  in  any  other  State. 

All  the  factories  built  before  the  war  of  1812 
were  built  after  the  plan  first  introduced  by 
Slater,  with  very  little  modification.  His  spin- 
ning was  what  was  usually  denominated  the 
water-frame,  built  in  separate  sections  of  eight 


INCREASE    OF   MANUFACTURES.  57 

spindles  each;  but  before  1808,  when  the  second 
mill  was  built  in  New  Hampshire,  the  spinning- 
frame,  denominated  the  throstle,  had  been  intro- 
duced and  was  adopted  in  this  mill. 

By  this  time  the  business  had  been  com- 
menced in  a  small  way  in  several  parts  of  New 
England,  and  the  population  were  beginning  to 
acquire  some  skill  in  the  various  operations  of 
building  machinery  and  its  use.  About  1807 
and  1808,  the  embarrassments  of  commerce, 
the  restrictions  upon  the  importation  of  goods, 
and  the  consequent  advance  in  prices,  gave  an 
impulse  to  the  production  of  all  such  articles 
as  could  be  manufactured  here,  to  take  the 
place  of  imported  goods,  particularly  of  cotton ; 
and  in  1812  there  were  said  to  be  nearly  forty 
cotton  mills  in  Rhode  Island,  with  about  30,000 
spindles,  and  about  thirty  mills  in  Massachu- 
setts within  thirty  miles  of  Providence,  with 
about  18,000  spindles,  amounting  in  the  whole 
to  48,000  spindles. 

The  war  with  Great  Britain  in  1812  raised 
the  price  of  goods  to  such  extravagant  rates, 
that  articles  of  cotton,  such  as  had  been  pre- 
viously imported  from  England  at  seventeen  to 
twenty  cents  per  yard,  were  sold  by  the  pack- 
age ;it  seventy-five  cents. 

This  state  of  things  stimulated  the  building 
of  cotton  factories  to  such  a  degree,  that  a  list 


58  MEMORIAL   TO   CONGRESS. 

of  the  mills  in  and  near  Providence,  including 
a  number  in  Massachusetts  at  the  close  of  the 
war,  makes  the  number  of  mills  96,  and  of  spin- 
dles 65,264,  being  an  average  of  680  spindles 
to  a  mill,  eighteen  of  the  whole  number  having 
less  than  300  spindles  each,  and  the  largest, 
that  of  Almy,  Brown,  &  Slater,  5,170  spin-, 
dies. 

A  memorial  to  Congress,  from  the  manufac- 
turers of  Providence  in  1815,  estimates  *  the 
number  of  mills  within  thirty  miles  of  that 
town  at  140,  and  the  number  of  spindles  at 
130,000.  But  the  most  reliable  statement  of 
the  extent  of  the  business  at  that  time  is  a  list 
of  the  cotton  mills  in  Rhode  Island,  and  the 
adjoining  parts  of  Massachusetts  and  Connec- 
ticut, lately  communicated  to  the  "Rhode  Island 
Society  for  the  Encouragement  of  Domestic 
Industry,"  by  Samuel  Green,  Esq.,  of  Woon- 
socket.  It  was  compiled  by  a  committee  of 
manufacturers  in  1815,  for  the  purpose  of  mak- 
ing an  assessment  on  each  mill,  to  pay  the  ex- 
penses of  sending  an  agent  to  Washington,  to 
attend  to  the  interests  of  the  manufacturers  at 
the  approaching  session  of  Congress,  and  bears 
the  signature  of  John  H.  Clark,  Secretary, 
James  Burrill,  Chairman,  and  Amasa  Mason, 

*  This  estimate  is  said  to  have  been  made  under  the  direction 
of  Mr.  Burrill,  a  member  of  the  Senate. 


MANUFACTURES   IN   1815.  59 

Philip  Allen,  and  Samuel  W.  Green,  Assessors. 
The  number  of  mills  and  spindles  given  in 

Rhode  Island  are:  mills,  99;  spindles,  68,142. 
Massachusetts,  "       52;         "         39,468. 

Connecticut,  "       14;         "         11,700. 


Making  in  the  whole,  "     165;         "       119,310. 

A  report  of  the  Committee  on  Manufactures 
to  Congress,  in  1815,  gives  the  following  partic- 
ulars of  the  cotton  manufacture  in  the  United 
States. 

Capital,  $40,000,000 

Males  employed  of  the  age  of  17  and  upwards,  10,000 

Boys  under  seventeen,  24,000 

Women  and  female  children,  66,000 

Wages  of  100,000,  averaging  81.50  per  week,  815,000,000 

Cotton  manufactured,  90,000  bales,  =  27,000,000  lbs. 

Number  of  yards,'  81,000,000 

Cost,  averaging  30  cents  per  yard,  -  824,300,000. 

When  the  importation  of  goods  was  recom- 
menced at  the  close  of  the  war,  the  sudden 
reduction  of  prices  was  destructive  to  all  man- 
ufacturing operations.  The  business,  that  had 
been  carried  on  during  the  war  without  much 
skill  or  economy,  was  prostrated,  and  the  estab- 
lishments that  had  been  built  up  at  an  extrava- 
gant expense  became  worthless. 

For  the  purpose  of  protecting  this  interest 
which  was  supposed  to  have  some  claim  upon 
the  country  on  account  of  the  aid  afforded  dur- 


60  TARIFF. 

ing  the  war,  the  tariff  of  1816  was  passed  by 
Congress. 

This  measure  was  supported  and  advocated 
by  Southern  politicians,  on  the  ground  of  en- 
couraging the  manufacture  of  our  own  cotton, 
instead  of  importing  cotton  goods  from  India, 
or  those  made  from  foreign  cotton.  On  the 
contrary,  it  met  with  decided  opposition  from 
the  people  of  the  North,  where  navigation  and 
commerce  had  been  the  favorite  pursuits;  and 
resuming  their  usual  occupations  and  course  of 
business,  at  the  close  of  the  war,  they  were  dis- 
posed to  look  with  an  unfavorable  eye  upon  the 
growth  of  a  branch  of  business  which  it  was  sup- 
posed would  interrupt  the  operations  of  foreign 
trade,  and  they  were,  of  course,  opposed  to  the 
tariff  for  the  encouragement  of  manufactures; — 
but  so  much  capital  had  been  embarked  in  mills 
and  machinery,  and  so  many  parties  had  be- 
come interested  in  their  operation,  that  with 
the  encouragement  of  the  tariff  great  efforts 
were  made  to  continue  the  business.  Until  this 
time  the  operation  of  cotton  factories  had  been 
confined  to  the  production  of  yarn,  which  was 
woven  upon  the  hand-loom. 

The  power-loom  had  come  into  use  to  some 
extent  in  England  previous  to  the  commence- 
ment of  the  war  of  1812. 

The  first  attempt  to  weave  by  machinery  was 


POWER   LOOMS.  61 

made  by  M.  De  Gennes.  His  loom  is  described 
in  the  "Philosophical  Transactions"  in  the  year 
1700.  About  1765  a  weaving  factory  driven 
by  water,  was  built  by  Mr.  Garside  of  Man- 
chester. It  was  furnished  with  swivel  looms, 
probably  those  invented  by  M.  Vaucanson  and 
described  in  the  "  Encyclopedic  Methodique"  It 
was  worked  for  a  considerable  time,  but  with 
no  advantage,  one  man  being  required  for  each 
loom.     (Guest,  Hist.  p.  44.) 

Experiments  had  been  made  with  various 
success,  for  several  years,  principally  in  Scot- 
land, for  the  purpose  of  weaving  by  power. 
The  power-loom,  patented  by  Cartwright  in 
1785.  was  put  in  operation  at  Doncaster,  but 
was  unsuccessful.  Another  mill,  with  five  hun- 
dred looms  upon  the  same  plan,  was  built  at 
Manchester  by  Mr.  Grimshaw  in  1790.  but  was 
destroyed  by  a  mob. 

In  Rees's  Cyclopedia,  article  Weaving,  is  a  very 
elaborate  account  of  a  loom  invented  by  Mr. 
Austin  of  Glasgow,  in  1789,  and  so  far  per- 
fected in  1798,  that  it  was  put  in  operation  at 
Mr.  Monteith's  mill,  near  Glasgow, — with  what 
success  does  not  appear. 

A  patent  for  a  power-loom  was  taken  by 
Miller  in  1796,  and  another  by  Mr.  Toad  of 
Boulton  in  1803.  William  Horrocks  of  Stock- 
port took  patents  for  a  power-loom   in   1803, 


62  DRESSING  MACHINES. 

and  1805,  and  for  further  improvements  in 
1813.  This  has  now  come  into  general  use 
as  the  crank,  or  Scotch  loom,  and  seems  to 
have  been  the  first  that  was  put  in  operation 
with  any  success. 

After  the  power-loom  was  so  far  perfected  as 
to  be  capable  of  weaving,  there  was  great  de- 
lay in  putting  it  in  operation,  for  want  of  suit- 
able machinery  for  dressing  and  preparing  the 
warps.  The  great  obstacle  was,  that  it  was 
necessary  to  stop  the  loom  frequently,  in  order 
to  dress  the  warp,  as  it  unrolled  from  the  beam, 
which  operation  required  a  man  to  be  em- 
ployed for  each  loom,  so  that  there  was  no 
saving  of  expense. 

To  remedy  this  difficulty,  Radcliff  and  Ross 
took  patents,  in  1804,  for  a  dressing-machine, 
which  to  some  extent  supplied  the  deficiency. 

Horrocks  and  Radcliff,  sharing  the  common 
destiny  of  inventors,  failed.  This  with  other 
causes  retarded  the  adoption  of  these  machines, 
so  that  it  is  supposed  that  in  1813  there  were 
not  more  than  100  dressers,  and  2400  power- 
looms  in  use,  in  England  and  Scotland.  Yet 
this  was  enough  to  alarm  the  hand-loom  weav- 
ers, who,  attributing  to  machinery  the  distress 
caused  by  the  Orders  in  Council  and  the  Amer- 
ican war,  made  riotous  opposition  to  all  new 
machines,  and  broke  the  power-looms  set  up  at 


POWER   LOOMS.  (33 

West  Houghton,  Midclleton,  and  other  places. 
(Barnes,  p.  235.) 

From  the  time  that  the  manufacture  of  cot- 
ton yarn  began  to  be  extended  in  this  country, 
many  attempts  were  made  to  construct  ma- 
chinery to  weave  by  power.  As  early  as  1806, 
a  loom  was  built  at  Exeter,  New  Hampshire,  by 
T.  M.  Mussey,  which,  as  an  experiment,  would 
perform  all  the  operations  of  weaving,  but 
could  not  be  called  a  labor-saving  machine. 
Experiments  were  continued  with  great  perse- 
verance upon  this  loom  until  1809,  but  I  am 
not  aware  that  the  web,  or  the  machine,  was 
ever  completed. 

About  the  same  time  an  attempt  was  also 
made  at  Dorchester.  In  this  loom,  the  warp, 
instead  of  a  horizontal,  was  in  a  perpendicular 
position,  —  in  this  respect  resembling  that  pat- 
ented by  Johnson  of  Preston,  England,  in  1805, 
and  that  invented  by  Cartwright  in  1785.  I 
saw  another  in  operation  at  Dedhain  in  1809, 
which  was  capable  of  weaving  about  twenty 
yards  of  coarse  cloth  per  day,  but  none  of  these, 
though  very  ingenious  experiments,  were  capa- 
ble of  being  put  in  operation  with  such  econ- 
omy as  to  supersede  the  old  process  of  hand- 
weaving. 

During  the  few  years  of  restriction  upon 
importations,  in  1809-10  and  11,  and  the  war 


64  WALTHAM  LOOMS. 

of  1812,  such  was  the  increased  demand  for  any 
manufactures  of  cotton  that  could  be  produced 
by  hand-looms,  or  by  all  the  machinery  then  in 
operation  for  spinning,  that  little  was  thought 
of  improvements  or  new  inventions.  This  state 
of  things  continued  in  this  country  until  the 
enterprise  of  Mr.  Francis  C.  Lowell,  Mr.  Nathan 
Appleton,  and  their  associates  resulted  in  the 
successful  establishment  of  the  power-loom 
weaving  at  Waltham  in  1814,  of  which  such 
an  interesting  account  has  been  given  by  Mr. 
Appleton  in  his  "  Introduction  of  the  Power 
Loom,  and  Origin  of  Lowell,"  and  also  in  the 
Memoir  of  Mr.  Appleton,  prepared  for  the  Mas- 
sachusetts Historical  Society  by  Hon.  Robert 
C.  Winthrop. 

The  fact  of  the  employment  of  the  power- 
loom,  successfully  and  extensively,  in  Great 
Britain  was  known  in  this  country,  but  it  was 
very  difficult  to  obtain  any  accurate  informa- 
tion upon  the  subject,  and  impossible  to  get 
any  reliable  knowledge  of  the  construction  of 
the  loom  on  account  of  the  restrictions  upon 
the  exportation  of  machinery,  and  the  jealousy 
of  communicating  the  plans  of  any  of  their 
manufacturing  operations. 

According  to  Mr.  Appleton,  (Introduction  of 
the  Power  Loom,)  the  attention  of  Mr.  Francis 
C.  Lowell  and  himself  was  directed  to  this  sub- 


POWER-LOOMS  IN    SCOTLAND.  Q 5 

ject  when  they  met  in  Edinburgh,  in  1811,  and 
Mr.  Lowell  determined,  in  accordance  with  Mr. 
Appleton's  advice,  to  visit  Manchester  before 
his  return  to  America,  for  the  purpose  of  ob- 
taining all  possible  information  on  the  subject, 
with  a  view  to  the  introduction  of  the  im- 
proved manufacture  in  the  United  States.  Mr. 
Lowell  returned  in  1813,  bringing,  without 
doubt,  a  better  knowledge  of  the  manufactur- 
ing operations  of  Great  Britain  than  was  pos- 
sessed by  any  other  person  in  this  country, 
and  which  enabled  him  and  his  associates  to 
establish  the  improved  manufacturing  system  at 
Waltham,  the  incidents  connected  with  which 
are  detailed  in  the  interesting  pamphlet  men- 
tioned above. 

Before  1810  it  is  supposed  that  power-looms 
were  in  successful  operation  in  Scotland,  as  Mr. 
Lowell  and  Mr.  Appleton  mention  them  in  their 
visit  to  Edinburgh  in  1811,  but  in  England  it 
would  seem  they  were  more  dilatory  in  adopt- 
ing these  improvements.  An  article  in  the 
"London  Quarterly  Review,"  published  in  1825, 
says,  with  reference  to  the  rapid  increase  of  the 
town  of  Manchester,  "At  this  moment  there  are 
upwards  of  thirty  thousand  looms  worked  by 
steam-engines.  At  the  close  of  the  year  1811 
there  was  not  one  in  use." 

But  the  author  of  that  article  was  under  a 
5 


66  LOOMS    IN   GREAT    BRITAIN. 

great  mistake.  "  A  factory  for  steam-looms 
was  built  at  Manchester  in  1806.  Soon  after- 
wards two  others  were  erected  at  Stockport; 
and,  about  1809,  a  fourth  was  completed  at 
West  Houghton.  In  1818  there  were  at  Man- 
chester and  the  vicinity  fourteen  factories,  con- 
taining about  two  thousand  looms;  and  in  1821 
thirty-two  factories  containing  5732  looms  ;  and 
the  number  has  been  still  further  increased,  so 
that  there  are  at  present  (1823)  not  less  than 
10,000  steam-looms  at  work  in  Great  Britain." 
(History  of  the  Cotton  Manufacture,  by  Richard 
Guest.)  According  to  all  the  above  statements, 
power-loom  weaving  had  made  but  little  prog- 
ress in  Great  Britain  before  it  was  commenced 
in  this  country  at  Waltham. 

Mr.  Appleton's  "  Introduction  of  the  Power- 
Loom"  contains  many  interesting  particulars  of 
the  steps  taken  in  perfecting  the  machinery 
and  organizing  the  various  departments  of  the 
business.  He  relates  the  anecdote  of  a  visit 
to  Taunton  to  purchase  the  bobbin-winder,  in 
substance  the  same  as  Mr.  Moody  related  it  to 
me.  In  the  commencement  of  the  business  at 
Waltham,  the  filling,  instead  of  being  spun  by 
the  mule,  as  in  England,  was  spun  upon  the 
warp-frame,  and  of  course  had  to  be  wound 
upon  a  different  bobbin  to  fit  it  for  the  shuttle. 
This,  at  first,  was  done  by  a  machine  invented 


INVENTION    OF   FILLING-FRAME.  (57 

by  Stowell  of  Worcester;  but  Shepherd  of  Taun- 
ton had  taken  a  patent  for  a  machine  for  the 
purpose,  which  Mr.  Moody  thought  preferable 
to  the  one  they  had  in  use ;  and  he  went  with 
Mr.  Lowell  to  Taunton  to  see  if  they  could 
make  an  agreement  for  the  use  of  their  patent 
at  a  reasonable  price.  They  found  Mr.  Shep- 
herd disinclined  to  make  any  abatement,  telling 
them  that  "  they  must  of  necessity  come  to  his 
terms."  Mr.  Moody  replied  that,  rather  than 
give  that  price,  he  would  invent  a  machine  to 
sjrin  the  filling  on  a  bobbin  suitable  for  the  shut- 
tle. Mr.  Lowell,  who  at  once  perceived  the 
practicability  of  doing  this,  dropped  the  subject, 
and  after  some  further  conversation,  took  leave. 
After  starting  on  their  return,  Mr.  Lowell  told 
Mr.  Moody  that  he  had  suggested  the  plan  of 
spinning  the  filling  on  the  bobbin,  and  now  he 
must  accomplish  it.  Mr.  Moody  had  made  the 
observation  only  by  way  of  chaffering  for  a 
bargain,  but  under  these  circumstances  turned 
his  attention  to  the  subject,  and  the  result  was 
the  invention  of  the  filling-frame,  which  was 
patented  and  has  continued  in  use  ever  since. 

Mr.  Moody  also  stated  to  me  another  incident 
respecting  the  construction  and  completing  of 
the  dressing-frame.  At  first  they  had  used  wood- 
en rollers  where  the  threads  of  the  warp  were 
submitted  to  the  action  of  the  size,  but  being 


(jg  DRESSING-ROLLERS. 

constantly  wet,  the  wood  swelled  and  warped, 
so  that  the  rolls  would  not  fit  accurately.  They 
then  tried  covering  the  rollers  with  metal,  by 
casting  a  coat  of  pewter  on  the  outside;  but 
after  various  methods  of  casting,  sometimes  in 
sand,  and  sometimes  in  a  mould  made  of  iron, 
for  the  purpose,  they  were  still  found  to  be  im- 
perfect. He  at  length  thought  of  making  a 
mould  of  soap-stone  in  which  to  cast  them. 
Meeting  his  brother  in  Boston,  who  had  been 
aware  of  the  trouble  he  had  experienced  on 
the  subject,  he  said  to  him,  UI  think  I  skull  get 
over  the  difficult'/  about  the  rollers,  I  intend  t<>  tr/j 
soap-stone,"  meaning  for  a  mould  to  cast  them 
in.  His  brother  replied,  misapprehending  him, 
"  Well,  I  should  think  soap-stone  zvould  make  a 
very  good  roller."  Mr.  Moody  made  no  reply, 
but  took  the  hint,  and  made  his  rollers  of  soap- 
stone,  which  has  come  into  general  use  for  the 
purpose. 

In  the  power-looms  that  were  first  put  in 
operation  both  at  Waltham  and  Lowell,  the 
motion  of  the  lay,  which  beats  up  the  weft,  was 
given  by  weights.  After  a  time,  many  objec- 
tions were  found  to  the  use  of  weights,  and  it 
was  thought  expedient  to  give  the  motion  di- 
rectly from  the  revolving  shaft  by  a  cam.  The 
mathematical  calculations  to  give  this  cam  such 
a  form  as  would  produce  the  accelerated  veloc- 


LOWELL.  (39 

ity  of  a  falling  body,  and  thus  to  give  the  same 
motion  as  the  weights,  was  a  problem  for  Mr. 
Warren  Colburn,  whose  skill  in  this  and  many 
other  -instances  was  made  available  in  the  ap- 
plication of  mathematical  science  to  practical 
mechanics. 

After  the  interesting  account  given  by  Mr. 
Nathan  Appleton,  of  the  "  Origin  of  Lowell,"  it 
is  unnecessary  to  enlarge  upon  the  subject. 
I  recollect,  however,  a  conversation  in  1824, 
with  Mr.  Patrick  Jackson,  with  reference  to  his 
expectations  of  the  future  prospects  of  the 
growth  of  Lowell,  which  at  the  time  appeared 
to  be  extravagant  and  almost  visionary.  He 
stated  that  the  purchases  of  real  estate,  at  what 
was  then  East  Chelmsford,  on  account  of  the 
manufacturing  company,  comprised  about  the 
same  number  of  acres  as  the  original  peninsula 
of  the  City  of  Boston,  before  it  began  to  be 
extended  by  filling  up  the  flats,  and  said,  —  "If 
our  business  succeeds,  as  we  have  reason  to 
expect,  we  shall  have  as  large  a  population  in 
the  place  in  twenty  years  from  this  time,  as 
there  was  in  Boston  twenty  years  ago."  As 
extravagant  as  this  prediction  appeared  at  the 
time,  when  only  two  of  the  Merrimack  mills 
were  erected,  and  the  population  was  less  than 
2000,  it  was  more  than  realized. 

Immediately  after  the  power-loom  was  put 


70  WILLIAM   GILMORE. 

in  operation  at  Waltham  in  1814,  measures 
were  in  progress  for  its  introduction  into  Rhode 
Island,  from  a  different  source,  and  of  a  differ- 
ent construction. 

William  Gilmore  emigrated  to  the  British 
Provinces  and  came  to  Boston  in  September 
1815.  He  had  been  acquainted  with  the  power- 
loom  and  dressing-machine  before  he  left  Scot- 
land. He  brought  to  Boston  certain  small  arti- 
cles of  Scotch  manufacture,  which  in  the  state  of 
trade  at  that  time  met  a  profitable  market.  Here 
he  was  met  by  Mr.  Robert  Rogerson,  who  was 
told  that  Gilmore  had  been  employed  in  power- 
loom  weaving,  and  understood  the  construction 
of  the  power-looms  and  dressing-machinery. 
Mr.  Rogerson  took  him  to  Uxbridge  and  Smith- 
field,  and  made  him  known  to  John  Slater. 
He  proposed  to  Mr.  Slater  to  build  the  machin- 
ery for  power-loom  weaving,  —  to  have  nothing 
for  his  labor  unless  he  succeeded  in  putting  the 
looms  in  operation.  But  the  prospects  of  busi- 
ness at  that  time  were  so  discouraging,  that 
parties  were  not  willing  to  enter  into  engage- 
ments, and  he  went  to  work  as  a  machinist  at 
Smithfield,  where  he  commenced  paying  rent 
October  21,  1815. 

Previous  to  this  time  a  machinist  by  the 
name  of  Blydensburg  had  been  employed  at 
the  Lyman  Mills,  in  North  Providence,  in  at- 


CRANK-LOOM.  71 

tempting  to  build  a  power-loom,  but  without 
success.  Gilmore  was  employed,  in  the  early 
part  of  1816,  to  build  twelve  looms,  and  also 
machinery  for  warping  and  dressing,  from  the 
plans  and  drawings  he  had  brought  with  him, 
which  he  accomplished  to  the  satisfaction  of 
his  employer ;  and  they  were  put  in  operation 
early  in  1817.  For  the  compensation  of  ten 
dollars  he  allowed  Messrs.  David  Wilkinson  & 
Co.  the  use  of  his  patterns  for  building  twelve 
other  looms ;  and  they  got  their  twelve  looms  in 
operation  nearly  as  soon  as  those  built  by  Gil- 
more.  This  was  the  first  introduction  of  the 
crank-loom  in  this  country  ;  and,  to  manifest 
their  gratitude  for  the  services  rendered  by  Mr. 
Gilmore,  the  manufacturers  subscribed  to  raise  a 
fund  of  fifteen  hundred  dollars ;  and  one  of  the 
subscribers  to  this  fund  refers  to  his  receipt  for 
payment  of  his  subscription,  which  he  has  pre- 
served, bearing  date  May  31, 1817, — thus  show- 
ing the  time  when  the  crank-loom  was  put  in 
operation  in  this  country.  The  family  of  Gil- 
more, after  his  death,  removed  to  Baltimore  ; 
and  it  ought  not  to  be  forgotten  that  one  of  his 
sons  distinguished  himself  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  present  rebellion,  by  coming  for- 
ward boldly  among  a  disloyal  people  to  supply, 
at  his  own  expense,  refreshments  to.  one  of  the 
first  regiments  of  soldiers  from  Rhode  Island. 


72  WALTHAM   MACHINERY. 

which  passed  through  that  city  soon  after  the 
assault  upon  the  regiment  from  Massachusetts. 

Gilmore's  looms  were  built  in  a  very  substan- 
tial manner,  so  that  some  of  them,  after  thirty 
or  forty  years  use,  still  continue  capable  of  doing 
very  good  work,  after  supplying  some  of  the 
improvements  since  introduced,  but  without 
any  important  alteration  in  the  mechanical  con- 
struction of  the  loom.  His  warper  and  dressing- 
frame  were  such  as  were  adopted  in  Scotland 
at  an  early  period,  but  were  much  less  perfect 
than  those  that  had  been  invented  at  Waltham, 
and  put  in  use  there  two  or  three  years  earlier. 

Mule-spinning  having  been  introduced  in 
Rhode  Island,  the  building  of  the  power-loom, 
by  Gilmore,  completed  the  manufacturing  sys- 
tem of  that  State  within  about  three  years 
from  the  time  when  the  power-loom  was  put  in 
operation  at  Waltham. 

The  inventions  and  improvements  in  the 
machinery  at  Waltham  having  been  patented, 
including  the  loom,  the  double  speeder,  warper, 
dressing-frame,  and  filling-frame,  and  the  right 
to  the  use  of  these  patents  being  held  at  a 
high  price,  most  of  the  mills  already  built  in 
Rhode  Island  adopted  the  crank-loom,  and  in- 
troduced various  plans  in  the  process  of  mak- 
ing the  roving,  instead  of  using  the  patented 
speeder,  among  which  was  the  tube-speeder,  in- 


SYSTEMS   OF  MACHINERY.  73 

vented  b}r  Danforth,  which  was  afterwards  intro- 
duced to  a  considerable  extent  in  Great  Britain. 

On  the  other  hand,  many  of  the  mills,  which 
had  already  been  erected  for  spinning,  in  Mas- 
sachusetts and  New  Hampshire,  adopted  the 
Waltham  loom,  and  most  of  the  large  estab- 
lishments, which  were  built  from  time  to  time 
in  those  States,  followed  the  Waltham  plan  in 
regard  to  other  machinery,  as  well  as  the  loom. 

There  was  thus  established  two  different  sys- 
tems or  schools  of  manufacturing,  one  of  which 
might  be  denominated  the  Rhode  Island,  and  the 
other  the  Waltham  system. 

One  uses  the  live  spindle,  the  other  the  dead 
spindle  ;  one,  for  filling,  use  the  mule,  the  other 
the  filling-frame ;  one  the  Scotch  dresser,  the 
other  the  Waltham  dresser ;  one  the  crank- 
loom,  the  other  the  cam-loom.  Both  parties 
adhere  pretty  strongly  to  their  own  preferences, 
and  manufacturers  are  still  undecided  which  is 
the  best  in  some  particulars.  It  was  not  until 
ten  years  after  the  crank-loom  had  been  in  use 
in  lihode  Island,  that  it  was  adopted  at  Wal- 
tham, or  Lowell,  and  in  neither  place,  nor  in 
any  of  the  mills  that  followed  their  system,  was 
mule-spinning  introduced  until  after  1830. 

The  machinery  first  constructed  at  Waltham 
was  to  a  great  extent  the  invention  of  ingen- 
ious machinists,  who  had  no  practical  knowledge 


74  RHODE  ISLAND   SYSTEM. 

of  manufacturing  operations,  and  sometimes  the 
facility  of  constructing  the  machine  was  more 
regarded  than  its  adaptation  to  the  use  for 
which  it  was  designed.  The  machinery  intro- 
duced at  Rhode  Island,  on  the  contrary,  was 
adapted  to  its  purpose  by  the  skill  acquired  by 
practical  experience  in  the  English  factories 
before  the  emigration  of  Slater. 

But  there  was  a  difference  in  the  general 
management  of  the  business  in  the  two  systems, 
as  well  as  in  the  machinery,  and  the  establish- 
ment at  Waltham  formed  a  new  era  in  the 
manufacturing  business. 

Mr.  Slater  had  proceeded  upon  the  English 
plan  of  employing  families  in  the  mill,  often  in- 
cluding children  at  an  age  when  it  would  have 
been  more  proper  for  them  to  be  at  school. 
The  consequence  was  the  bringing  together, 
in  a  factory  village,  a  collection  of  families  de- 
pendent entirely  upon  their  labor,  and  often  of 
parents  who  were  disposed  to  live  upon  the 
labor  of  their  children  rather  than  upon  their 
own,  and  exposed  to  suffering,  as  the  operatives 
have  been  in  England,  whenever  there  was  any 
interruption  in  the  business.  It  was  also  the 
custom,  instead  of  making  payments  in  money, 
to  establish  what  was  called  a  Factory  Store, 
from  which  the  families  were  furnished  with 
provisions  and  other  articles,  in  payment  for 


WALTHAM    SYSTEM.  75 

their  labor,  which  resulted  in  a  sort  of  depen- 
dence upon  their  employers. 

At  Waltham,  they  at  once  commenced  the 
practice  of  the  payment  of  wages  in  money, 
every  week  or  fortnight,  and  also  provided 
boarding-houses  to  accommodate  all  in  their 
employ.  This  precluded  the  employment  of 
children  :  as  about  half  the  usual  wages  of 
females  would  be  required  for  the  payment 
of  board,  the  Company  could  not  afford  to  pay 
board  and  wages  to  those  who  were  not  capable 
of  doing  full  work.  The  result  was  that  only 
those  of  mature  age  could  find  employment; 
and  such  usually  having  a  home  to  which  they 
could  return  in  case  of  any  interruption  in  the 
business,  they  were  not  subject  to  be  left  de- 
pendent or  exposed  to  suffering. 

From  the  time  of  the  introduction  of  the 
power-loom,  and  the  extension  of  its  use,  the 
cotton  manufacture  became  established  as  an 
important  element  in  American  industry,  par- 
ticularly in  New  England.  Under  much  discour- 
agement at  times  by  reason  of  the  changing  pol- 
icy of  the  government  as  to  the  tariff  of  duties 
on  imported  goods,  the  number  of  spindles 
continued  to  increase.  But  we  are  not  able  to 
determine  from  the  census  reports  the  rate  of 
increase  with  any  certainty,  as  there  was  not, 
until  the  census  of  1840,  any  specific  statement 
of  the  number  of  spindles  in  the  several  States, 


76  SPINDLES  IN   UNITED   STATES. 

or   of  the    aggregate    number  in    the    United 
States. 

In  the  Report  of  the  census  of  1840  the  total 
number  is  stated  at  2,285,337,  of  which  1,598,- 
198  were  in  New  England.  But  in  the  census 
of  1850,  neither  the  "  Abstract "  printed  in  1853, 
nor  the  "Compendium"  printed  in  1854,  or  in 
the  quarto  Report,  do  we  find  any  statement  of 
the  number  of  spindles,  though  there  have  been 
some  statistics  published  that  seem  to  imply 
that  the  returns  of  the  marshals  contained  an 
enumeration  of  the  spindles ;  but  in  the  state- 
ments published  by  authority,  the  information 
as  to  the  cotton  manufacture  is  confined  to  the 
"  Number  of  establishments,"  "  Amount  of  cap- 
ital," "  Bales  of  cotton,"  "  Tons  of  coal,"  "  Value 
of  materials,"  "  Value  of  products,"  "  Number  of 
hands  employed,"  and  "  Rate  of  wages,"  neither 
of  which  particulars  afford  so  good  an  index  of 
the  extent  of  the  business  as  the  number  of  spin- 
dles ;  and  the  returns  received,  respecting  most 
of  these  details,  would  only  be  an  approximate 
estimate  much  less  reliable  than  the  number  of 
spindles,  which  could  be  accurately  counted. 

The  number  of  spindles  in  New  England  in 
1850  was  estimated  upon  reliable  authority  at 
2,751,078;  —  the  population  of  New  England 
according  to  the  census  of  1850  was  2,728,106, 
making  an  average  of  1008  spindles  to  1000 
inhabitants,  which  seems  a  very  remarkable  co- 


SPINDLES   IN   GREAT  BRITAIN.  77 

incidence,  and  still  more  so  when  we  find  nearly 
the  same  proportion  between  the  population 
and  number  of  spindles  in  Great  Britain  at  the 
same  time  as  follows :  — 

In  England,  Scotland,  and  Wales,  the  popula- 
tion in  1850  was  20,793,552,  and  according  to 
Ellison's  Hand-Book  the  number  of  spindles 
was  20,857,062,  equal  to  1003  spindles  to  1000 
inhabitants ;  so  that  at  that  time  we  had  be- 
come as  much  a  manufacturing  people  in  New 
England  as  they  were  in  Great  Britain.  From 
1850  to  1860  the  population  in  New  England 
had  increased  to  3,135,283.  The  number  of 
spindles  was  reported  at  3,959,297 ;  looms, 
103,204,  being  an  average  of  about  thirty- 
eight  spindles  to  the  loom. 

By  the  preceding  statements  it  would  appear 
that  the  number  of  spindles  from  1850  to  1860 
had  increased  much  faster  than  the  population, 
so  that  in  1860  the  number  of  spindles  in  New 
England  would  average  1265  to  the  thousand 
inhabitants. 

The  population  of  Great  Britain,  taken  for 
April  8,  1861,  was  as  follows  :  — 

England  and  Wales,         .         .         .  20,205,504 

Scotland,  ....  3,061,251 

Making  for  Great  Britain,  23,266,755 

TVe  have  no  reliable  estimate  of  spindles  in 
Great  Britain  at  the  above  date;  but  at  the 
same  rate  of  increase  per  annum  as  between 


78  INCREASE    OF   COTTON   SPINNING. 

1850  and  1856, —  according  to  Ellison's  Hand 
Book,  —  there  is  reason  to  suppose  the  num- 
ber of  spindles  in  1861  could  not  be  short  of 
33,000,000,  which  would  be  equal  to  an  aver- 
age of  1418  spindles  to  1000  inhabitants.  So 
that  the  spindles  in  Great  Britain,  as  well  as 
in  New  England,  were  increasing  faster  than 
the  population. 

In  a  lecture,  delivered  at  Blackburn  in  1857, 
by  Alderman  John  Baynes,  he  says  :  — 

"  In  1846  there  was  no  authentic  or  official 
statement  of  the  number  of  spindles  at  work, 
and  Messrs.  DuFay  &  Co.  of  Manchester,  at 
considerable  expense,  obtained  much  valuable 
information  on  this  subject ; "  and  the  returns 
of  the  'Factory  Commissioners'  show  the 
number  in  1850  and  1856,  so  that  the  ac- 
count stands  as  follows  :  — 


England  and  Wales, 

Scotland, 

Ireland, 


DuFay  fr  Co., 
1846. 


15,554,619 

1,729,878 

215,503 


17,500,000 


Factory  Commissioners. 


1850. 


19.173,969 

1,683,093 

119,955 


20,977,017 


1856. 


25,818,576 

2,041,139 

150,502 


28,010,217 


The    estimate     of 
Baynes  for  the  rest 
of  Europe  and    the 
United    States  is  as 
follows  :  — 

1846. 

1856.  ' 

Europe, 

United  States, 

7,585,000 
2,500,000 

14,650,000 
3,950,000 

Total. 

27,585,000 

46,610.217 

SPINDLES   IN  EUROPE.  79 

He  says  further :  "  I  have  not  been  able  to 
obtain  any  accurate  data  as  to  the  number 
of  spindles  at  present  in  operation  in  Europe 
or  the  United  States,  excepting  one  furnished 
by  Mons.  Bruno  Henneberg,  of  Vienna,  in 
reference  to  the  extent  of  the  cotton  trade  in 
Austria,  viz  :  — 

Lower  Austria,  .....  569,979 

Upper  Austria, 83,590 

Styria,  25,464 

Erain  Gorr, 30,300 

Tyrol,  214,094 

Bohemia,  449,906 

Lombardy, 129,046 

Venice,  28,464 

Hungary,  2,400 

Total  spindles,         .        .         1,533,243." 

According  to  Gov.  Woodberry's  Report  upon 
Cotton,  the  first  cotton  machinery  introduced 
in  France  was  in  1787,  being  about  the  same 
time  with  the.  first  in  operation  in  the  United 
States.  The  first  in  Switzerland  is  stated  on 
the  same  authority  under  date  of  1798,  and 
the  first  in  Saxony  in  1799. 

In  the  statistics  of  Massachusetts,  we  have 
the  most  reliable  account  of  the  progress  of 
the  cotton  manufacture  in  that  State  since 
1837,  made  up  from  very  careful  returns  from 
every  town  in  the  State  :  — 


gO     MACHINERY  IN  MASSACHUSETTS. 

Number  of  cotton  mills.  Number  of  spindles. 

1837         ...         282         .  .         5G5,031 

1845         ...  302  .  .         817,483 

1855         ...         294         .  .      1,519,527 

1860         ...         301         .  .      1,688,471 

By  such  data  as  we  can  obtain  from  the 
United  States  census,  the  whole  number  of 
spindles  in  the  country,  in  1840,  was  2,285,337; 
1860,  5,035,798. 

The  machinery  for  spinning  cotton  having 
been  originally  brought  into  use  in  England, 
was  introduced  into  this  country  and  France  at 
about  the  same  time,  and  at  a  later  period  into 
other  countries  of  Europe.  It  was  then  quite 
imperfect,  compared  with  what  it  is  at  present. 
Improvements  have  continued  to  be  made  both 
in  this  country  and  Europe  ;  and  many  American 
inventions  have  been  of  sufficient  importance  to 
be  adopted  in  Great  Britain ;  and  we  have  also 
availed  ourselves  of  the  improvements  that 
have  been  made  there,  so  that  our  best  mills 
are  not  inferior,  so  far  as  machinery  is  con- 
cerned, to  those  of  other  countries.  The  rate 
of  wages  being  higher  here,  we  have  had  the 
greatest  inducement  to  render  our  labor-saving 
machinery  as  perfect  as  possible. 

Among  the  improvements  in  cotton  ma- 
chinery that  have  originated  in  this  country, 
one  of  the  most  important  is  the  combination 
of  the  train  of  three  bevel  wheels,  to  regulate 


ARNOLD'S  ROVING  FRAME.        gl 

the  variable  velocity  requisite  for  winding  the 
slender  filaments  of  cotton  on  the  bobbin  of 
the  roving  frame,  which  was  originally  applied 
by  a  native  of  Rhode  Island,  Mr.  Aza  Arnold. 
This  invention  was  successfully  put  in  oper- 
ation in  1822,  and  Mr.  Arnold's  patent  was 
issued  January  21,  1823.  Previous  to  the  use 
of  this  simple  but  admirably  scientific  adapta- 
tion of  wheel-work  to  the  roving  frame,  a  very 
difficult  arrangement  of  racks  and  pinions  was 
used  for  the  purpose,  which  had  been  intro- 
duced by  Messrs.  Cocker  &  Higgins  of  Man- 
chester, which,  though  very  ingenious,  was 
attended  with  great  cost  for  every  alteration 
of  the  size  of  the  roving  for  finer  or  coarser 
work.  The  roving  frame,  or  double  speeder, 
introduced  at  Waltham  and  Lowell,  was  sub- 
ject to  the  same  objection,  which  was  the 
reason  that  most  of  the  cotton  mills  in  Massa- 
chusetts and  New  Hampshire,  built  after  the 
Waltham  plan,  were  generally  adapted  to  the 
manufacture  of  a  single  article  of  sheeting 
or  drilling,  of  the  same  number  of  yarn, 
without  any  means  of  changing  from  one 
fabric  to  another,  according  to  the  wants  of 
the  market. 

The  invention  of  Mr.  Arnold,  after  having 
been  used  in  the  United  States  two  years,  was 
considered  worthy  of  being  introduced  in  Eng- 


§2  EQUATION   BOX. 

land ;   and  a  model  was  taken  to  Manchester 

by  an  American  in  1825 ;  and  in  January,  1826, 
letters  patent  were  obtained,  for  the  same 
combination  for  the  same  purpose,  by  Henry 
Houldsworth,  Jr., —  known  as  his  differential  or 
equation  box.  Ure,  in  his  article  on  the  cotton 
manufacture,  after  describing  the  apparatus  for 
giving  a  uniform  motion  to  the  surface  of  the 
bobbins,  while  the  circumference  is  gradually 
enlarged  by  the  successive  layers  of  the  rov- 
ing wound  around  it,  and  referring  to  the 
improvements  patented  by  Houldsworth,  says  : 
"It  may  be  considered  the  most  ingeniously 
combined  apparatus  in  the  whole  range  of 
productive  industry."  It  having  been  patented 
in  England,  Dr.  Ure  was  not  aware  that  it 
was  an  American  invention,  and  gives  the 
whole  credit  of  it  to  his  countryman,  who  also 
derived  great  profit  from  his  patent,  —  while 
Mr.  Arnold  was  hardly  known  by  the  public 
in  his  own  country  as  the  inventor,  and,  be- 
sides, spent  most  of  the  profits  he  had  realized 
from  the  early  sale  of  his  patents  in  a  pro- 
tracted litigation  to  establish  his  rights,  so  that 
after  the  final  judgment  of  the  courts  but 
little  time  remained  for  him  to  derive  any 
income  from  his  invention,  and  he  acquired 
neither  fame  nor  wealth  by  an  improvement 
which    has    been    of    immense    advantage    to 


CAP  SPINNER.  83 

manufacturers,  both  at  home  and  abroad.*  It 
was  not  brought  into  use  at  Waltham  or 
Lowell  until  two  or  three  years  after  it  was 
patented  in  England.! 

Another  American  invention  is  the  Danforth 
or  cap  spinner,  which  was  invented  in  1828  by 
Charles  Danforth  of  Paterson,  New  Jersey,  by 
whom  it  was  patented  in  this  country  Septem- 
ber 2,  1828.  A  patent  was  afterwards  taken 
in  the  name  of  John  Hutchinson  of  Liverpool, 
in  1830,  when  it  went  into  extensive  use,  in 
England  and  other  European  States,  for  spin- 
ning the  weft  or  filling,  particularly  before  the 
late  improvements  in  the  self-acting  mule. 

George  Danforth,  of  Massachusetts,  was  the 
inventor  of  the  tube  frame,  otherwise  known 
as  the  Taunton  speeder,  from  its  having  been 
first  built  and  brought  into  use  in  that  place. 
This  machine  has  likewise  been  used  to  a  con- 
siderable extent  in  England,  being  a  much  less 

*  This  differential  or  equation  box,  thus  applied  to  cotton  ma- 
chinery, is  probably  the  same  said  to  have  been  first  invented  in 
France  by  Pecqueux  in  1813,  and  constructed  by  Perrelet  in 
1823,  to  regulate  the  movements  of  an  orrery.  —  See  "Bulletin 
de  la  Sociele  pour  V encouragement  de  I'industrie  nationale," 
1823. 

■f  For  the  particulars  in  relation  to  this  improvement,  I  am  in- 
debted to  a  communication  from  Mr.  Zachariah  Allen,  being  an 
extract  from  a  manuscript  work  he  is  preparing  respecting  the 
cotton  manufacture,  and  which  it  is  hoped  he  will  not  further 
delay  giving  to  the  public. 


84  ECLIPSE   AND   PLATE  SPEEDER. 

expensive  machine  than  what  is  called  the 
double  speeder  or  fly  frame,  and  answering 
veiy  well  for  the  purpose  in  the  manufacture 
of  coarse  yarn.  It  was  patented  in  England, 
by  Mr.  Dyer  of  Manchester,  in  J  825,  having 
been  in  use  in  this  country,  and  patented 
September  2,  1824. 

A  very  cheap  machine  for  making  roving, 
called  the  eclipse  speeder,  and  capable  of  very 
rapid  operation,  was  invented  by  Gilbert  Brew- 
ster of  Poughkeepsie,  New  York,  and  patented 
April  18,  1829.  It  was  used  for  a  time  to  a 
considerable  extent  on  account  of  the  cheap- 
ness of  the  machine  and  the  great  quantity 
of  work  produced.  It  was  introduced  into 
Manchester  in  1835,  and  built  by  Sharp, 
Roberts  &  Co.,  and  known  as  the  eclipse 
roving-frame. 

The  plate  speeder  was  likewise  brought  into 
use  in  Manchester  in  1835,  by  Mr.  Neil 
Snodgrass,  who  imported  one  from  America. 

What  is  called  the  stop-motion  on  the  draw- 
ing frame  was  designed  and  brought  into  use  at 
Saco,  Maine,  by  the  writer,  in  the  year  1832. 
Before  this  invention,  the  slender  fleeces  of 
cotton  from  the  card,  not  having  received  any 
twist  to  give  them  strength,  and  with  hardly 
tenacity  enough  to  support  their  own  weight 
in  the  operations  of  the  drawing-frame,  where 


DRAWING    STOP-MOTION.  85 

four  strands  or  more  were  combined  into  one, 
required  constant  watching,  lest  the  deficiency 
of  one  strand,  by  breaking  or  any  other  cause, 
should  render  the  work  imperfect ;  and,  with 
the  greatest  care,  it  was  impossible  to  prevent 
many  accidental  imperfections.  By  the  intro- 
duction of  this  improvement,  not  only  was 
much  loss  of  time  prevented  in  stopping  the 
machine  to  correct  mistakes,  but  the  speed 
might  be  increased  with  safety,  and  with  the 
assurance  that  the  work  was  correctly  done. 
JSTo  patent  was  taken  for  it  in  this  country, 
the  importance  of  it  not  having  been  duly 
appreciated  by  the  inventor  until  it  had  been 
put  in  use  by  other  parties  ;  but  a  patent  was 
afterwards  taken  by  H.  Houldsworth  in  tug- 
land,  from  which  the  inventor  derived  some 
profit  ;  and  no  machinery  is  now  built  without 
adopting  this  improvement,  either  in  England 
or  thi<   country. 

Mr.  Montgomery,  in  his  work  on  the  "  Cotton 
Manufacture  of  Great  Britain  and  America," 
considers  the  application  of  the  stop-motion  on 
the  warper,  which  was  first  used  at  Waltham,  an 
important  improvement  over  the  warper  used 
in  (rreat  Britain,  which  requires  the  utmost 
attention  to  notice  instantly  when  a  thread 
breaks ;  and  when  this  happens,  the  end  of  a 
broken  thread  may  wind  around  the  beam  so 


8(3  DRESSING  MACHINES. 

far  as  to  require  some  minutes  to  find  it  and 
put  the  machine  in  motion  again;  —  but  this 
cannot  happen  with  the  American  warper, 
which  stops  instantly  when  a  single  thread 
breaks.  This  application  of  the  drop-wire  to 
stop  the  machine  is  said  to  have  been  suggested 
by  Jacob  Perkins,  well  known  for  many  in- 
genious inventions. 

Of  the  dressing  machine  invented  at  Wal- 
tliam,  Mr.  Montgomery  says:  It  is  much  more 
simple,  more  easily  attended  and  kept  in  order, 
besides  requiring  less  power  and  oil,  than  any 
he  has  seen,  either  in  England  or  Scotland, 
and  can  be  made  for  about  half  the  cost  of 
those  used  in  Manchester  and  Glasgow.  He 
says  that  those  which,  instead  of  the  measur- 
ing roller,  are  mounted  with  steam-drying  cyl- 
inders, invented  and  patented  by  Samuel 
Batchelder  in  1835,  produce  the  greatest 
quantity  of  work. 

A  spinning-frame  called  the  ring-spinner 
was  invented  by  John  Sharp,  of  Providence, 
about  1831,  and,  with  some  later  improve- 
ments, has  come  into  extensive  use  in  this 
country,  and  is  supposed  by  many  to  produce 
yarn  cheaper  than  any  other  machine,  but  its 
use  in  England  to  any  great  extent  has  prob- 
ably been  prevented  by  the  great  improve- 
ments in  the  self-acting  mule. 


SELF-ACTING   TEMPLES.  §7 

For  a  long  time  after  the  power  loom  went 
into  operation  in  Great  Britain,  the  use  of  the 
old  hand-temples  was  continued  for  keeping 
the  cloth  extended  to  the  width  of  the  warp 
in  the  reed ;  and  the  changing  of  these  temples, 
as  the  weaving  proceeded,  required  the  watch- 
ful care  of  the  weaver,  and  was  often  neg- 
lected. 

The  use  of  the  self-acting  temples,  invented 
by  Ira  Draper,  of  Weston,  Mass.,  and  patented 
January  7,  1816,  was  introduced  at  Waltham 
about  1825,  and,  it  is  believed,  long  before  any- 
thing; of  the  kind  was  used  in  England. 

A  correspondent  says  he  never  saw  a  self- 
acting  temple  in  use  in  Scotland,  his  last  visit 
there  having  been  in  1855.  In  1850  one  was 
pointed  out  to  him  in  England  as  a  novelty, 
so  that  it  must  have  been  many  years  after 
the  general  use  of  this  important  invention 
in  this  country  before  it  was  adopted  in  Great 
Britain.  Mr.  Montgomery  says,  of  the  weav- 
ing by  power  in  America,  the  self-acting  tem- 
ples, besides  saving  a  great  deal  of  labor  on  the 
part  of  the  attendant,  make  a  very  superior  and 
uniform  selvedge,  and  expresses  his  surprise 
that  they  have  not  been  more  generally  adopted 
in  Great  Britain.* 

*  What  renders  this  still  more  surprising  is,  that,  as  early  as 
1805,  in  an  English  patent  to  Thomas  Johnson  and  James  Kay, 


88  DYNAMOMETER. 

Many  other  American  improvements  of  mi- 
nor importance  might  be  enumerated. 

The  use  of  leather  belts  instead  of  iron  gear- 
ing for  transmitting  motion  to  the  main  shafting 
of  a  mill,  was  introduced  by  Mr.  Paul  Mood}7,  at 
Lowell,  in  1828.  Though  not  to  be  called  an 
invention,  this  proved  to  be  a  very  important 
improvement,  and  was  entirely  original  in  its 
application  to  the  transmission  of  fifty  or  an 
hundred  horse-power  by  a  single  belt,  and  has 
been  very  generally  adopted  in  the  mills  in 
New  England. 

Of  similar  character  was  a  Dynamometer,  not 
specifically  applied  to  the  cotton  manufacture, 
out  affording  better  means  of  ascertaining  the 
power  for  driving  machinery,  either  by  water 
or  steam  than  any  instrument  which  had  been 
used  for  the  purpose.  This  was  designed  and 
built  at  Saco  by  the  writer,  and  exhibited  at 
the  Fair  of  the  Mechanics'  Institute  in  Boston 
in  1839,  when  a  medal  was  awarded  for  the  in- 
vention. 

It  was  made  known  in  Europe  by  a  descrip- 
tion in  a  work  of  J.  Montgomery  on  the  Cotton 
Manufacture,  published  at  Glasgow  in  1840  ;  and 
in  a  German  periodical  *  is  a  long  article  upon 

among  other  improvements  in  the  loom  is  included  a  revolving 
temple. 

*  Dingler's  Polytechnic  Journal,  Vol.  84,  p.  7. 


ENGLISH   MANUFACTURERS.  g9 

the  various  dynamometers  in  use,  in  which  this 
is  included  as  taken  from  the  "Proceedings  of 
the  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Industry  in 
Prussia,"  and  is  distinguished  in  the  engraving 
as  "  Batchelder's  dynamometer,"  and  described 
as  simple  and  preferable  to  any  known  appar- 
atus for  ascertaining  the  power  actually  used  in 
driving  machinery. 

In  regard  to  manufacturing  skill,  so  far  as 
relates  to  carding  and  spinning,  in  which 
they  have  had  in  Great  Britain  the  experience 
of  one  generation  before  we  began,  they  must 
be  farther  advanced  than  we  are,  particularly 
as  they  serve  a  regular  apprenticeship  to  the 
business,  and  follow  the  same  employment 
through  life  ;  while  with  us,  so  far  as  regards 
the  female  operatives,  and  to  a  certain  extent 
as  to  others,  it  is  only  an  employment  for  a 
few  years,  until  an  establishment  or  the  cares 
of  a  family  require  their  attention;  and  boys 
or  men  seldom  follow  the  business  long  enough 
to  acquire  any  skill,  before  they  return  to  some 
agricultural  employment;  so  that  the  greater 
part  of  those  at  work  in  our  mills  are  only  a 
succession  of  learners,  who  leave  the  business 
as  -non  as  they  begin  to  acquire  some  skill  and 
experience;  and  therefore,  in  relation  to  card- 
ing and  spinning,  the  English  manufacturers 
are  far  in  advance  of  us.     In  regard  to  weav- 


90  COST   OF   WEAVING. 

ing,  the  power-loom  having  been  in  use  here 
nearly  as  long  as  in  Great  Britain,  their  manu- 
facturers have  not  so  much  the  advantage  of 
us,  as  a  large  proportion  of  our  weavers  have 
had  some  experience  in  hand-loom  weaving  be- 
fore commencing  in  the  factoiy.  But  there  is 
a  difference  in  our  management  in  regard  to 
weaving,  which  has  an  effect.  With  us  a  weav- 
er generally  attends  four  looms,  sometimes 
more,  and  the  looms  operate  at  such  a  moderate 
speed,  and  are  so  organized  with  self-acting  tem- 
ples and  otherwise,  as  to  enable  the  weaver  to 
do  this  with  ease.  In  England  there  is  a  preju- 
dice, and  perhaps  a  stronger  influence,  against 
attending  more  than  two  looms,  and  it  is  at- 
tempted to  make  up  for  this  by  extraordinary 
speed. 

Four  looms,  at  a  speed  of  120,  would  weave 
480  threads  per  minute  ;  two  looms,  at  an 
increased  speed  of  fifty  per  cent.,  would  weave 
only  3G0  threads,  so  that  a  weaver  would  pro- 
duce only  three  quarters  as  much  cloth.  In 
an  establishment  in  England  of  630  looms,  of 
which  I  have  had  an  opportunity  to  examine 
all  the  particulars,  and  compare  them  with  a 
mill  here,  weaving  a  similar  article,  I  find  no 
weaver,  out  of  the  whole  number  of  346,  at- 
tending more  than  two  looms,  and.  comparing 
the  price  paid  for  weaving,  I  find  the  cost  to 


WATER  AND    STEAM  POWER.  91 

be  at  least  fifteen  per  cent,  more  than  in  this 
country  ;  and  the  wages  even  at  this  rate  were 
such  as  induced  the  weavers  to  strike  for  addi- 
tional pay. 

The  advantage  of  manufacturing  in  England. 
on  account  of  wages,  is  much  less  than  we  have 
generally  supposed.  The  business  is,  no  doubt, 
conducted  there  more  economically  in  many 
particulars  than  with  us.  The  cost  of  machin- 
ery is  less,  and  the  interest  on  capital  less,  and 
fine  articles,  or  such  as  require  experience  and 
skill,  can  undoubtedly  be  produced  cheaper 
there  than  here  ;  but  it  is  questionable  whether 
heavy  goods,  such  as  drilling  and  sheeting, 
which  make  up  a  very  large  proportion  of  the 
consumption  of  this  country,  can  be  produced 
cheaper  than  in  the  United  States. 

One  of  the  countervailing  advantages  in  this 
country,  compared  with  the  expense  of  manu- 
facturing in  Great  Britain,  is  the  abundance 
and  cheapness  of  water-power.  There  was. 
some  time  ago,  an  attempt,  by  interested  par- 
ties, to  prove  that  steam-power  was  cheaper 
than  water-power.  Facts  afford  a  practical 
refutation  of  this  theory.  In  England,  where 
coal  and  steam-power  is  much  cheaper  than 
in  most  of  the  manufacturing  districts  of  this 
country,  there  are  many  instances  where  water- 
wheels,   and   all    the    necessary    arrangements 


92  WATER   AND   STEAM  POWER. 

for   the    use  of  water-power,  are  provided  at 

great  expense,  where  water-power  can  be  used 
used  for  only  half  the  year.* 

In  this  country,  at  Manayunk,  where  the 
canal  for  the  supply  of  coal  to  the  city  of  Phil- 
adelphia passes  by  the  walls  of  the  mills,  and 
where  steam-power  can  be  produced  at  less 
cost  than  in  any  other  manufacturing  section 
of  the  country,  the  mills  are  driven  by  water- 
power  at  an  annual  rent  equal  to  sixty  dollars 
per  horse-power,  or  about  four  times  the  cost  of 
water-power  at  Lowell  or  Lawrence,  on  the 
Merrimack  Eiver,  where  the  rent  and  interest 
at  six  per  cent.,  payable  on  the  cost  of  water- 
power  and  land  for  a  mill,  will  average  a  frac- 
tion over  fifteen  dollars  per  horse-power  per 
annum. 

Mr.  Montgomeiy,  in  his  comparison  of  "  Cot- 
ton Manufacture  in  Great  Britain  and  the 
United   States,"    estimates  the    cost  of  steam- 

*  Mr.  Zachariah  Allen  says :  "  Notwithstanding  the  abun- 
dance of  coal  in  England,  and  the  very  general  use  of  the  steam- 
engine,  water-power  is  highly  valued  in  all  the  manufacturing 
districts,  and  mills  are  erected  on  streams,  which  in  many  in- 
stances are  sufficient  to  turn  the  water-wheels,  and  operate  the 
machinery  during  only  a  part  of  the  year."  And  in  his  visit 
to  Stanley  Mills,  he  mentions  "  five  large  cast-iron  water-wheel-, " 
and  says,  "My  surprise  was  greatly  excited  on  being  informed, 
that,  with  all  these  water-wheels,  a  deficiency  of  water  rendered 
it  necessary  to  keep  a  steam-engine  in  operation  three  or  four 
months  of  the  rear." 


STEAM-ENGINES.  93 

power  in  Massachusetts  at  about  ninety  dollars 
a  year  per  horse-power,  which  he  says  is  about 
double  the  cost  of  the  same  power  in  Glasgow. 
There  is  much  uncertainty  in  all  estimates  of 
the  cost  of  steam-power,  arising  in  part  from 
the  want  of  accuracy  in  the  admeasurement 
of  the  power  of  steam-engines,  and  an  over- 
estimate of  their  power,  as  well  as  from  other 
causes. 

The  cost  of  steam-power  has  been  much 
reduced  by  improvements  in  the  steam-engine 
within  a  few  years,  both  here  and  in  Great 
Britain ;  but  if  wye  reduce  the  above  estimates 
by  one  half,  it  would  leave  the  cost  of  steam- 
power  at  $22.50  in  Scotland,  which  would  be 
fifty  per  cent,  above  the  cost  of  water-power 
on  the  Merrimack. 

If  we  take  the  improvements  in  the  Corliss 
engine,  which  is  said  to  have  reduced  the  aver- 
age consumption  of  coal  to  two  and  a  half 
pounds  to  the  horse-powrer  per  hour,  the  cost 
of  fuel  only,  with  coal  at  $6  per  ton,  would  be 
$27.90  per  annum,  or  nearly  double  the  cost 
of  water-power  on  the  Merrimack, — besides  the 
wages  of  engineer  and  fireman,  and  also  subject 
to  fluctuations  in  the  price  of  coal  according  to 
the  market,  which  at  present  would  be  fifty 
per  cent,  above  the  estimate. 

This    estimate   of  water-power,  at   §1-5   per 


94  SPINDLES   IN    OPERATION. 

horse-power  per  annum,  also  includes  the  cost 
of  land  suitable  for  mill-sites  at  Lowell  and 
Lawrence,  the  two  principal  manufacturing 
cities  in  the  country  ;  but  such  is  the  su- 
perabundance of  water-power  in  New  Eng- 
land, and  other  parts  of  the  country,  that 
it  could  be  obtained,  in  situations  favorable 
for  manufacturing,  for  half  the  cost  above 
stated. 

According  to  present  appearances,  the  history 
of  the  introduction  of  the  cotton  manufacture 
may  almost  be  considered  a  history  completed. 
There  are  at  this  time  probably  not  much  more 
than  one  third  the  number  of  spindles  in  oper- 
ation that  there  were  in  1860. 

In  the  Report  of  the  Boston  Board  of  Trade, 
for  the  year  1863,  Mr.  Edward  Atkinson  states 
that  he  made  a  list  of  the  principal  mills  in  the 
New  England  States  and  New  York,  to  ascer- 
tain how  many  of  the  spindles  were  stopped 
in  June,  1862,  and  found  the  number  to  be 
2,327,000  ;  and  again,  November  1st,  made  a 
similar  estimate,  and  found  the  number  to  be 
2,169,650.  According  to  the  census  of  1860, 
the  number  of  spindles  in  those  States  was 
4,288,113,  so  that  in  June  and  November,  1862, 
there  were  only  about  one  half  of  the  spindles 
in  operation,  and  since  that  time  the  number 
has  been  considerably  reduced ;  and  Mr.  Atkin- 


SUPPLY   OF   COTTON.  95 

son  estimates  that  the  total  number  in  oper- 
ation, December  31st,  was  about  1,700,000, 
which  would  be  about  two  fifths  of  the  number 
in  those  States. 

We  have  no  means  of  estimating,  with  any 
accuracy,  the  diminished  operations  in  Great 
Britain,  but,  from  the  complaints  of  distress  for 
want  of  emplo}'ment,  there  is  reason  to  suppose 
the  interruption  of  the  business  there,  has  not 
been  less  than  in  this  country.  A  confirmation 
of  this  opinion  may  be  found  in  the  Report  of 
the  "  Cotton  Supply  Association,"  of  April  1, 
1863,  according  to  which  the  total  importation 
of  cotton  into  Great  Britain  in  1862  was  only 
4,678,180  cwts.,  while  the  total  importation  for 
the  year  1859-60,  before  any  interruption  to 
the  business,  was,  according  to  Mann's  "Cotton 
Trade  of  Great  Britain,"  10,946,331  cwts. ;  so 
that  the  supply  for  1862  was  but  little  more 
than  four  tenths  of  the  former  importation.  Of 
this  reduced  supply,  instead  of  the  usual  pro- 
portion of  85  per  cent,  of  American  cotton,  the 
proportion  is  reduced  to  4^  per  cent,  of  Amer- 
ican, including  all  that  has  been  received  from 
the  West  India  islands  and  other  places  con- 
cerned in  running  cotton  from  the  blockaded 
ports. 

While  the  supply  from  America  has  been 
thus  diminished,  an  increase  has  taken  place 
from  other  countries  as  follows  :  — 


96 


PRODUCTION    OF   COTTON. 


1861. 

1S6  2. 

Increase. 

civts. 

cwts. 

arts. 

Greece, 

415 

1,865 

1.450 

Turkish  dominions, 

638 

41,21-2 

10,579 

Egypt, 

365,108 

526,897 

161,789 

Western  coast  of  Africa, 

1,889 

3,380 

1,991 

Mauritius,     . 

7,288 

17,688 

10,400 

Madras, 

175, 682 

335,432 

159,750 

Bengal, 

462 

92.292 

91,880 

New  Grenada, 

1,383 

10.34  2 

8,959 

Brazil, 

154,378 

208,384 

54,006 

China, 

14,695 

14,695 

706,738 

1,252,187 



Total  increase, 

545,449 

The  stimulus  of  high  prices  has  probably 
occasioned  a  still  further  increase  of  produc- 
tion in  those  countries  for  the  present  year ; 
and  this,  together  with  the  cultivation  of  cot- 
ton in  other  climates  favorable  to  its  produc- 
tion, with  the  advantage  of  the  employment 
of  free  labor,  will  probably  have  the  effect, 
within  a  few  years,  to  supply  the  world  with 
cotton  of  an  improved  quality,  without  depend- 
ence upon  slavery,  or  any  monopoly  of  the 
Southern  States. 

As  to  the  production  of  cotton  in  this  coun- 
try for  the  year  or  two  past,  we  have  no  means 
of  forming  an  estimate,  except  by  conjecture. 
However,  when  we  consider  the  diminished 
number  of  slaves  employed  in  the  South,  and 
the  interruption  to  the  cultivation  of  cotton 
from  other  causes,  and  the  increased  proportion 


PRICE   OF   COTTON. 


97 


of  labor  necessarily  diverted  to  the  production 
of  grain  and  provisions,  we  may  be  satisfied 
that  the  power  of  King  Cotton  has  suffered  as 
much  in  the  field  as  in  the  factory. 

The  events  of  the  last  two  years  have  pro- 
duced such  an  entire  change  in  the  cultivation 
of  cotton,  and  its  manufacture,  both  in  this 
country  and  abroad,  that  it  is  difficult  to  form 
any  opinion  as  to  the  future,  and  yet  it  would 
be  intensely  interesting  to  be  able  to  look  for- 
ward a  few  years  in  anticipation  of  coming 
events.  Much  will  depend  upon  the  supply 
and  price  of  cotton.  The  cost  to  New  England 
manufacturers  for  each  month  from  January 
1861  to  September  1863,  taking  the  average  of 
the  market  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest 
price  of  the  month,  has  been  as  follows :  — 


1861. 

1862. 

1863. 

January 

12| 

344 

73 

February 

m 

234 

89 

March 

12| 

26| 

72 

April     . 

13 

28! 

64 

May      . 

13 

284. 

61 

June 

15 

304, 

524 

July       . 

15| 

41 

63 

August . 

17 

m 

664. 

September 

20 

54* 

73 

October 

23 

58 

November 

234 

634. 

December 

"1 

68 

The  proprietors  of  those  mills,  which  have 
been  in  operation  for  the  year  past,  have  found 

7 


98  SUPPLY   OF   COTTON. 

their  purchases  of  middling  cotton  to  aver- 
age rather  above  than  below  sixty  cents  per 
pound,  which  is  about  five  times  the  price  for 
the  few  years  iDrececling.  At  this  rate  the 
quantity  of  goods  that  could  be  manufactured 
and  sold  at  a  moderate  profit,  has  kept  in  oper- 
ation about  one  third  of  the  spindles  in  the 
Northern  States. 

It  is  evident  that  the  wants  of  the  commu- 
nity will  continue  to  require  a  considerable 
supply  of  cotton  manufactures,  notwithstanding 
the  high  price  of  the  raw  material,  and  if  there 
should  be  such  an  increase  in  the  supply  as  to 
produce  a  decline  in  price,  the  demand  for  con- 
sumption would  increase,  but  such  an  increase 
in  the  supply  must  be  very  slow  and  uncertain. 

The  imports  of  cotton  into  Great  Britain  in 
1862,  above  the  quantity  imported  in  1861 
from  all  those  countries  from  which  there  had 
been  any  increase,  was  about  seventy-seven  per 
cent,  upon  the  quantity  imported  from  the 
same  countries  in  the  former  year,  or  nearly 
five  per  cent,  on  the  whole  imports,  —  and 
though  the  stimulus  of  high  prices  may  pro- 
duce a  still  further  increase  from  many  for- 
eign sources,  the  supply  from  such  sources  must 
be  quite  limited,  when  we  consider  that  only 
one  sixth  part  of  the  cotton  manufactured  in 
England  has  been  derived  from  all  other  coun- 


SUPPLY  OF   GOODS.  99 

tries  than  the  United  States,  —  and  where  the 
increase  depends  upon  new  planting,  it  will 
require  a  long  time  to  make  it  available ;  so 
that  the  principal  reliance  must  be  on  resum- 
ing the  cultivation  in  this  country  under  more 
favorable  circumstances  than  the  present. 

With  reference  to  the  operations  of  our  cot- 
ton mills,  we  shall  undoubtedly  import  less  and 
manufacture  more  of  our  textile  fabrics  than 
we  have  been  accustomed  to  do,  and  whenever 
business  shall  resume  its  ordinary  course,  it  will 
require  a  large  quantity  of  goods,  not  only  to 
supply  the  consumption,  but  to  fill  up  the 
deficient  stock  in  all  the  channels  of  trade, — 
goods  may  therefore  be  expected  to  maintain 
their  price  according  to  the  cost  of  the  raw 
material. 

But  all  these  calculations  as  to  results  can 
only  be  considered  as  probabilities,  subject  to  be 
interfered  with  in  the  present  unsettled  state 
of  affairs,  by  so  many  contingencies  from  polit- 
ical as  well  as  other  causes,  that  the  changes 
and  chances  for  a  few  years  to  come  may  be  as 
strange  and  unexpected  as  have  been  those  of 
the  few  years  past. 


100  COTTON  MANUFACTURES. 


SOME  PARTICULARS  IN  RELATION  TO  COTTON  AND 
COTTON   MANUFACTURES, 

CHRONOLOGICALLY   ARRANGED. 

The  earliest  patent  granted  in  Great  Britain  for  any- 
important  improvement  in  manufacturing,  -was  that  to  John 
Kay,  for  the  invention  of  the  Fly-shuttle,  May  26, 1733 

The  first  machinery  for  spinning,  of  which  we  have  any 
satisfactory  account,  was  that  invented  by  John  Wyatt,  soon 
after  1730,  and  which  was  patented  in  the  name  of  Lewis 
Paul,  June  24, 1 738 

A  patent  for  carding  machinery,  in  which  is  described 
the  cylinder  card,  as  first  used  by  hand,  was  granted  to 
Lewis  Paul,  August  30, 1748 

A  second  patent  for  spinning  machinery  was  granted  to 
Lewis  Paul,  June  29, 1 758 

The  invention  of  the  drop-box  by  Robert  Kay,  by  means 
of  which  filling  of  different  colors  could  be  used  with  the 
fly-shuttle, 1 760 

According  to  Guest,  the  spinning-jenny  was  invented  by 
Thomas  Highs, 1 764 

The  invention  is  also  claimed  by  James  Hargraves,  who 
took  a  patent  for  it,  June  12,  1770 

Arkwright's  first  patent  for  spinning  machinery,  July  3,     1769 

Act  of  Parliament  to  prohibit  the  exportation  of  ma- 
chinery,        1 774 

Second  patent  to  Arkwright,  including  Carding,  Draw- 
ing, and  Spinning,  was  granted  December  16, 1 775 

Patent  to  Robert  Peele,  for  carding,  roving,  and  spin- 
ning, February  18, 1779 

Mule-spinning  invented  by  Samuel  Crompton  (not 
patented), 1779 

James  Watt  took  his  first  patents  for  improvements  in 

steam-engine,  March  12,   1782 

Subsequent  patents  in  1784  and  1785. 


COTTON  MANUFACTURES.  101 

Power-loom  invented  by  Edmund  Cartwright,  first  pa- 
tent, April  4, 1 785 

Subsequent  patents  1786,  1787,  1788. 

Arkwright's  patents  declared  void, 1785 

Cylinder  printing  was  patented  by  Thomas  Bell,  July 
1  7,  1783,  and  introduced  in  Lancashire 1785 

Bleaching  by  oxymuriatic  acid  was  discovered  in  France 
by  Berthollet, 1785 

And  introduced  at  Manchester  practically,* 1788- 

Legislature  of  Massachusetts  made  a  grant  to  Robert 
and  Alexander  Barr,  to  aid  them  in  building  machinery 
for  spinning  cotton, 1786 

First  machinery  for  spinning  cotton  put  in  operation  in 
France,.  .  . 1787 

Grant  to  Thomas  Somers  by  the  Legislature  of  Massa- 
chusetts, to  aid  him  in  completing  machines  for  spinning,        1787 

First  cotton  factory  built  in  the  United  States  at  Bev- 
erly, Massachusetts, 1 787 

Some  spinning-jennies  were  put  in  operation  in  Phil- 
adelphia and  Providence, 1788 

Commencement  of  the  cultivation  of  Sea  Island  cotton 
in  Georgia,  from  Pernambuco  seed, 1789 

Samuel  Slater  came  to  this  country,  and  was  employed 
at  New  York,  where  he  said  they  had  in  operation  one 
carding  engine  and  two  spinning-jennies,  at  the  close  of 
the  year 1789 

Slater  came  to  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  and  began 
building  a  cotton  factory, 1 790 

In  which  they  commenced  spinning  early  in 1791 

Cotton  gin  invented  by  Eli  Whitney  in  1793,  and  pa- 
tented March  14, 1 794 

Cotton  mill  built  by  Slater  and  others  at  Pawtucket, 
Massachusetts, 1798 

First  cotton  mill  and  machinery  in  Switzerland, 1  798 

First  spinning  machinery  in  Saxony, 1799 

Water-mill  at  Beverly,  Massachusetts,  with  Arkwright 
machinery, 1802 

*  See  Note  C. 
7* 


X02  COTTON   MANUFACTURES. 

*  First  cotton  mill  in  New  Hampshire  commenced  at 

New  Ipswich  in  1803,  and  went  into  operation 1804 

Second  mill  at  Pawtucket,  Massachusetts, 1805 

Mill  at  Pomfret,  Connecticut, 1806 

After  the  patents  for  a  power-loom  to  Edmund  Cart- 
wright,  several  other  patents  were  taken  by  other  parties, 
some  of  which  went  into  partial  operation,  but  none  with 
any  success,  until  the  invention  of  the  dressing-frame  by 
Radcliff  and  Ross,  with  the  assistance  of  Thomas  Johnson. 
Guest  gives  the  date  of  this  invention  1803  ;  Baines  in 
1804.  One  of  the  patents  to  Thomas  Johnson  was  issued 
February  28, 1803,  and  another  June  2,  1804  ;  and  a  mill 
for  weaving  was  built  at  Manchester  in  1806,  which  may 
be  considered  the  date  of  the  successful  commencement  of 

power-loom  weaving, 1806 

Mill  built  at  Smithfield,  Rhode  Island,  by  John  Slater,       1807 

Mill  built  at  Watertown,  Massachusetts, 1807 

Second  cotton  mill  in  New  Hampshire  at  New  Ipswich,       1808 

Norfolk  cotton  factory  at  Dedham,  incorporated, 1808 

First  cotton  mill  in  Maine,  at  Brunswick,    1809 

Mill  at  Dorchester,  Massachusetts,  incorporated, 1811 

Incorporation  of  Boston  Manufacturing  Company,  known 

as  Waltham  Company, >     1813 

Power-looms  in  operation  at  Waltham,  being  the  first  in 

the  United  States, 1814 

William  Gilmore  emigrated  to  this  country,        1815 

And  put  the  crank-loom  in  operation  in  Rhode  Island,    •  •      1817 

First  cotton  factory  built  at  Lowell, 1822 

Self-acting  mule  patented  by  Richard  Roberts,  March  29,     1825 

First  cotton  mill  at  Lawrence,  Massachusetts, 1849 

There  is  so  much  uncertainty  and  inaccuracy  as  to  the  dates 
of  manv  improvements  and  inventions  in  cotton  machinery  in  the 
accounts  given  by  Guest,  Kennedy,  Baines,  and  others,  who  seem 
to  have  copied  one  another's  errors,  instead  of  correcting  them, 
that  I  have  referred  for  the  dates  of  all  patented  improvements  to 
the  collection  of  "  Specifications  of  Inventions  from  March  2,1617, 
to  October  1,  1852,"  in  Great  Britain,  contained  in  one  hundred 
and  sixty  volumes  of  text,  and  three  hundred  and  ten  volumes  of 
plates,  a  copy  of  which  may  be  found  in  the  Boston  Library. 

*  See  Note  D. 


NOTES 


NOTE    A. 

This  early  patent  for  spinning  by  machinery  deserves  particu- 
lar attention  for  various  reasons.  In  the  first  place,  for  the  accu- 
racy 'with  which  it  describes  the  process  of  roller  spinning;  and 
secondly,  because  it  did  not  go  into  successful  operation  for  thirty 
years,  when  Arkwright  took  his  first  patent ;  and  thirdly,  because 
the  existence  of  this  patent  was  entirely  unknown  at  the  time  of 
the  trials  on  the  validity  of  Arkwright's  patents,  in  1781  and  1785, 
when  the  attempt  was  made  to  show  that  Arkwright  was  not  the 
original  inventor;  and  even  afterwards,  in  1828,  at  the  time  of 
the  controversy  between  Guest  and  the  "  Edinburgh  Review,"  in 
which  the  experiments  of  Thomas  Highs,  about  the  year  1764, 
■were  attempted  to  be  set  up  as  the  original  of  the  Arkwright  ma- 
chinery. 

This  invention  was  made  soon  after  1730,  by  John  Wyatt,  and 
was  patented  in  the  name  of  Lewis  Paul,  June  24,  1 738.  The  pro- 
cess, in  substance,  is  thus  described  in  the  specification.  The 
wool  or  cotton  being  prepared,  one  end  of  the  roping  is  put  be- 
tween a  pair  of  rollers,  which  being  turned  round,  by  their  motion 
draw  in  the  cotton  to  be  spun,  and  a  succession  of  other  rollers, 
moving  proportionally  faster  than  the  first,  draw  the  roving  into 
any  degree  of  fineness  which  may  be  required. 

A  second  process  is  then  described  that  is  quite  unintelligible 
without  drawings.  —  The  specification  then  proceeds  to  describe  a 
third  process  as  follows :  "  In  some  other  cases  only  the  first  pair 
of  rollers  is  used,  and  then  the  bobbins  on  which  the  yarn  is  spun, 
are  so  contrived  as  to  draw  faster  than  the  rollers  give,  and  in 
such  proportion  as  thejirst  sliver  is  proposed  to  be  diminished." 

Though  the  first  process  described  in  Paul's  patent  coincides 


104.  NOTES. 

exactly  with  Arkwright's  roller  spinning,  it  does  not  appear  to 
have  been  put  in  operation  even  by  the  inventor.  The  third 
process  only  was  used,  as  appears  by  the  letter  of  Charles  Wyatt, 
who  says,  —  "  the  wool  had  been  carded  in  the  common  way,  and 
was  passed  between  two  cylinders,  from  whence  the  bobbins  drew 
it  by  means  of  the  twist,"  —  and  also  by  the  patent  taken  for  an 
improvement  twenty  years  after  the  first,  June  29,  1 758,  which, 
after  describing  the  preparation  of  the  rove,  says,  —  "  which  be- 
in"  put  between  a  pair  of  rollers,  is  by  their  turning  round,  de- 
livered to  the  nose  of  a  spindle,  in  such  proportion  to  the  thread 
made  as  is  proper  for  the  particular  occasion."  The  spindle  is  so 
contrived  as  to  draio  faster  than  the  rollers  give,  in  proportion  to 
the  length  of  yarn,  into  which  the  matter  to  be  spun  is  proposed 
to  be  drawn. 

From  this  it  plainly  appears  that  the  extension  of  the  roving  to 
produce  the  yarn  did  not  take  place  by  the  different  motion  of 
successive  pairs  of  rollers,  but  by  the  stretch  between  the  rollers 
and  the  spindle,  somewhat  similar  to  the  drawing  of  the  roving 
while  receiving  the  twist,  as  on  the  spinning  jenny  or  the  one 
thread  wheel. 

There  are  no  drawings  in  existence  to  explain  the  processes  in 
this  first  patent,  but  the  specification  and  engravings  (published 
in  Baines'  History  of  the  Cotton  Manufacture,  p.  139)  of  the 
second  patent  to  Paul  in  1758,  for  improvements  in  the  machinery 
then  in  use,  show  plainly  that  they  relate  only  to  the  third  process 
of  the  first  patent,  and  would  be  very  imperfect  compared  with 
the  process  of  roller  spinning,  if  that  had  then  been  brought  into 
use. 

Mr.  Kennedy  (Baines,  p.  125,)  from  an  examination  of  spec- 
imens of  yarn  furnished  by  Mr.  Wyatt's  son,  pronounced  "  that 
it  could  not  be  said  by  competent  judges  that  it  was  spun  by  a 
similar  machine  to  that  of  Arkwright." 

It  may  seem  very  strange  that  so  many  years  elapsed  after  the 
invention  by  Wyatt  of  the  true  process  of  roller  spinning,  before 
it  was  put  in  operation  by  Arkwright  in  1769,  notwithstanding 
the  intervening  attempt  to  construct  machinery  for  the  purpose 
by  Highs,  and  perhaps  by  others ;  for  the  means  of  supplying  yarn 
for  the  weavers,  seems  to  have  been  an  object  which  engaged 
attention  very  extensively.     The  reason,  however,  that  none  of 


NOTES.  105 

these  plans  for  spinning  went  into  successful  operation  probably 
was  the  defect  in  the  preliminary  processes. 

We  see  no  mention  of  drawing,  or  any  operation  between  the 
card  and  the  spinning.  A  manufacturer  will  appreciate  the  im- 
portance of  this  operation,  and  others  also,  when  they  are  told 
that  in  some  of  our  mills  for  fine  spinning,  (that  at  Portsmouth 
for  instance,)  the  drawing  and  doubling  is  carried  to  the  extent 
that  the  sliver  as  it  comes  from  the  card  is  doubled  more  than  two 
thousand  times,  so  that  each  thread  as  it  is  spun  consists  of  so 
many  ends  of  carding  extended  and  drawn  down  to  the  size  of 
the  yarn. 

These  operations  tend  to  straighten  the  fibres  of  the  cotton  and 
lay  them  parallel,  so  as  to  give  strength  in  the  operation  of  spin- 
ning, and  also  to  the  yarn  after  it  is  spun,  and  it  may  be  doubtful 
now,  whether  the  most  perfect  Arkwright  spinning  machinery 
would  operate  successfully  with  roving  produced  without  tbis  pre- 
liminary process,  or  made  according  to  the  specification  in  the 
second  patent  to  Paul  in  1758,  which  says,  the  cotton  to  be  spun 
"  must  first  be  carded  upon  a  card  made  up  of  a  number  of  par- 
allel cards  with  intervening  spaces  between  each,  and  the  matter 
so  carded  must  be  taken  off  each  card  separately.  The  several 
roves  or  filliaments  so  taken  off  must  be  connected  into  one  en- 
tire roll,  which  being  put  between  a  pair  of  rollers,"  etc. 

It  was  not  until  the  first  patent  by  Arkwright  that  any  patent 
was  granted  for  draiving  machinery,  or  that  the  process  of  draw- 
ing received  due  attention,  and  this  in  all  probability  was  what 
insured  his  success. 

Baines,  p.  182,  says,  "  The  drawing  and  roving  frames  depend 
on  exactly  the  same  principles  as  the  spinning  frame,  for  which 
Arkwright  took  out  his  patent  of  1 769  ;  —  they  were  modifications 
of  that  machine,  but  the  new  processes,  which  they  were  made  to 
perform  were  indispensable  to  the  perfecting  of  the  yarn.  He 
was  the  first  to  introduce  the  drawing  process  and  to  apply  the 
spinning  rollers  to  the  purpose  of  roving. 

In  the  yarn  examined  by  Mr.  Kennedy,  the  difference  in  the 
position  of  the  fibres  in  that  spun  on  Wyatt's  machine  from  the 
parallelism  of  those  in  the  yarn  spun  by  Arkwright,  was  probably 
what  enabled  him  to  pronounce  that  the  former  had  been  spun 
by  a  different  process. 


106  NOTES. 


NOTE   B. 

The  first  patent  to  Edmund  Cartwright  for  a  power-loom  was 
granted  April  14,  1785,  and  he  also  took  further  patents  for  im- 
provements in  1786-87  and  88,  which  seem  to  comprise  all  the 
necessary  movements  for  weaving  by  power,  including  the  stop- 
motion  for  the  shuttle,  and  self-acting  temples.  He  built  a  mill 
for  weaving  at  Doncaster,  which  was  unsuccessful. 

About  1790,  Mr.  Grimshaw  of  Manchester,  under  a  license  from 
Mr.  Cartwright,  erected  a  weaving  factory,  operated  by  steam, 
which  after  various  difficulties  was  burnt,  and  Guest  says,  "  for 
many  years  no  further  attempts  were  made  in  Lancashire  to 
weave  by  steam." 

Guest  says  Mr.  Austen  of  Glasgow  invented  a  loom  in  1789, 
which  was  further  improved  in  1798,  and  a  building  for  two  hun- 
dred looms  was  erected  by  Mr.  Monteith  in  1800.  No  patent  is 
recorded  for  such  a  loom  to  Mr.  Austen.  Baines  says  Mr.  Mon- 
teith built  such  a  mill  in  1801  for  two  hundred  looms,  invented  by 
Robert  Miller,  whose  patent  was  granted  June  28,  1796. 

In  1803,  April  14,  a  patent  was  taken  by  John  Todd  for  a 
loom  in  which  the  lay  was  operated  by  a  crank,  and  with  a  shuttle 
stop-motion. 

In  1803,  April  20,  a  patent  was  granted  to  William  Horrocks, 
and  another,  May  14,  1805,  but  both  relate  to  the  motion  of  the 
shuttle,  and  neither  comprise  the  essential  requisites  for  a  power- 
loom.  Baines  says  Ilorrock's  loom  is  the  one  that  has  now  come 
into  general  use.  This  must  of  course  refer  to  his  loom,  as  im- 
proved, by  the  patent  granted  to  him  July  31,  1813,  in  which  the 
lay  is  driven  by  a  crank. 

In  1805,  August  9,  a  patent  was  granted  to  Thomas  Johnson 
and  John  Kay,  for  a  loom  with  revolving  temples,  and  such  a 
let-off  motion  as  is  still  in  use;  and  in  1806,  August  1,  to  Peter 
Marsland,  for  a  loom  which  operated  with  a  crank. 

Several  of  these  looms  seem  to  have  been  complete  in  all  that 
was  necessary  for  power-loom  weaving ;  but  though  some  of  them 
actually  went  into  operation,  none  of  them  were  capable  of  super- 
seding the  old  process  of  weaving  by  hand.  This  was  probably 
not  so  much,  from  any  defect  in  the  machinery,  as  for  want  of  the 


NOTES.  107 

suitable  preparation  of  the  web,  and  it  was  not  until  the  invention 
of  the  dressing-frame  by  Thomas  Johnson,  one  of  whose  patents 
bears  date  February  28,  1803,  and  the  other  June  2,  1804,  that 
power-loom  weaving  could  be  considered  as  successfully  estab- 
lished. In  this  case,  as  in  relation  to  the  spinning  machinery,  it 
was  a  long  time  after  the  true  principles  were  discovered,  and  the 
machinery  invented,  before  the  practical  skill  was  acquired  to  put 
it  in  operation. 

Guest  says  a  factory  for  steam-looms  was  built  at  Manchester  in 
1806,  and  soon  afterwards  two  others  at  Stockport,  and  about 
1809  a  fourth  was  completed  at  West  Houghton. 

It  does  not  appear  which  among  the  foregoing  patent  looms  was 
first  put  in  use,  but  according  to  Baines,  we  may  conclude  that 
the  loom  of  Horrocks,  after  his  improvements  in  1813  was  adopt- 
ed, so  that  it  would  appear  that  power-looms  were  not  completed 
and  in  successful  operation  for  any  considerable  time  before  their 
introduction  at  Waltham  in  1814,  and  it  should  be  recollected  that 
as  late  as  1813,  mobs  were  breaking  the  power-looms  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Manchester,  and  among  others,  those  above  men- 
tioned at  West  Houghton. 


NOTE  C. 

According  to  Baines,  it  occurred  to  Berthollet  that  cloth  might 
be  bleached  by  chlorine,  formerly  termed  oxymuriatic  acid,  and  in 
1785,  having  tested  it  by  experiment,  he  made  known  the  dis- 
covery. James  Watt  learned  this  from  Berthollet  at  Paris,  and 
on  his  return  to  England,  late  in  1786,  he  introduced  the  practice 
at  the  bleach-field  of  his  father-in-law,  Macgregor,  near  Glasgow. 
After  this,  without  any  knowledge  of  Watt's  experiments,  but 
acting  upon  the  suggestion  of  Berthollet's  papers,  Thomas  Henry 
of  Manchester,  who  was  delivering  lectures  on  dyeing,  printing, 
and  bleaching,  pursued  his  experiments  on  the  subject  and  made 
known  the  result  to  the  Manchester  bleachers,  in  1788,  by  a  public 
exhibition  of  the  bleaching  of  half  a  yard  of  calico. 


108  NOTES. 


NOTE  D. 

In  a  periodical  published  at  Manchester  a  few  years  ago,  a 
claim  was  set  up  that  the  first  cotton  mill  in  New  Hampshire  was 
built  at  Amoskeag  Falls  in  1804.  This  claim  was  supported  by 
the  testimony  of  Jonas  Harvey,  the  owner  of  a  saw-mill,  who  says 
he  leased  the  privilege  to  Benjamin  Prichard  in  the  fall  of  1804, 
when  the  cotton  mill  was  built.  This  seemed  to  make  a  very 
strong  case.  But  it  was  within  my  knowledge  that  the  first  ac- 
quaintance of  Prichard  with  the  cotton  business  was  by  means  of 
his  employment  in  the  first  factory  which  went  into  operation  in 
New  Ipswich  in  1804,  and  also  that  he  was  employed  in  building 
the  second  factory  in  New  Ipswich,  which  was  commenced  in 
1807,  and  of  course  there  must  have  been  a  mistake  in  the  date 
when  he  built  the  mill  at  Manchester.  Accordingly,  I  find  on 
referring  to  the  records  of  New  Ipswich,  that  he  did  not  leave 
that  place  until  1807,  and  continued  to  pay  a  poll  tax  there  until 
that  date.  Besides,  I  was  a  petitioner  to  the  legislature  of  New 
Hampshire  in  1808,  for  exemption  from  taxes  for  the  second  mill 
in  New  Ipswich,  and  during  the  progress  of  the  act  for  that  pur- 
pose through  both  branches  of  the  legislature  there  was  no  sug- 
gestion of  there  being  any  other  cotton  mill  in  the  State  at  that 
time,  except  the  two  at  New  Ipswich.  The  large  manufacturing 
establishments  at  Amoskeag  Falls  in  Manchester  were  com- 
menced in  1831. 


